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" Whose crew abandoned ship and then all stood up 
and cursed us." 



SUBMARINE 

AND 

ANTI-SUBMARINE 



BY 

HENRY NEWBOLT 

AU1 ■ -^ OP 'THE BOOK OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR,' 4 TALES OF THE GREAT WAE,' ETC. 



WITH A COLOURED FRONTISPIECE AND 20 FULL-PAGE 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY NORMAN WILKINSON, R.I. 



NEW YORK: 

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO 

FOURTH AVENUE AND 30th STREET 
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 

1919 



^°?< 

*>*« 



TO 

JOHN BUCHAN 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 
I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

xrv. 

xv. 

xvi. 

XVII. 



The Spirit of Submarine War 

The Evolution of the Submarine 

The Submarine of To-day 

A British Submarine Base 

Submarines and War Policy . 

Submarine v. War-ship . 

War-shd? v. Submarine . 

British Submarines in the Baltic 

British Submarines in the Dardanelles 

The U-Boat Blockade . 

Trawlers, Smacks, and Drifters 

The Destroyers 

P-Boats and Auxiliary Patrol 

Q-Boats 

Submarine v. Submarine 

The Hunted .... 

Zeeerugge and Ostend . 



vu 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

* Whose crew abandoned ship and then all 

stood up and cursed us ' (Coloured) . Frontispiece 

' Does not look like any ship you have ever seen ' . 

1 Towed back by an enemy trawler * # . 

' She was nearly submerged when the seaplane passed 
over her '........ 

1 Turning passengers and crews adrift in open boats ' . 

'Were brought in by the 50-ton smack Provident of 
Brixham' ........ 

1 She had gone full speed for the enemy, and rammed 
him' . 

' The Russian ice-breakers freed them from the har- 
bour ice '........ 

6 The Fort gave them 200 rounds at short range ' 

1 Made her fast alongside his conning-tower ' . 

' She was mortally hit ' ...... 

1 Fit Try's shell struck the base of the conning-tower ' . 

1 The U-boat started with an enormous advantage of 

gun power '........ 199 

' U.C. -boats stealing in across the black and silver 

water' . . . . . . ^ . . . 211 

' The diver who first went down found the submarine 

lying on her side ' . . . . . . 229 

' A fourth boat was partially lowered with a proper 

amount of confusion ' . , . . . . 241 

1 The U-boat never recovered from the surprise ' . 245 
' Was steering about in figures of 8, with his gun still 

manned' ........ 265 

* A huge column of water which fell plump on the Com- 

mander' ........ 287 

' The submarine suddenly broke surface ' . 291 

1 A tremendous explosion was seen at the shore end of 

the Mole ' 305 

viii 



SUBMARINE 
AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

CHAPTER I 

THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR 

It is probable that a good deal of the information 
contained in this book will be new to the public; for 
it has been collected under favour of exceptional 
circumstances. But the reader will gain little if he 
cannot contribute something on his side — if he cannot 
share with the writer certain fundamental beliefs. The 
first of these is that every nation has a spirit of its 
own — a spirit which is the mainspring of national 
action. It is more than a mechanical spring; for it 
not only supplies a motive force, but determines the 
moral character of the action which results. When we 
read the history of nations, and especially the history 
of their explorations, wars, and revolutions, we soon 
recognise the spirit of each, and learn to expect its 
appearance in every moment of crisis or endurance. 
If it duly appears, our impression is confirmed ; if it 
fails on any occasion, we are disappointed. But the 
disappointments are few — nations may at times surprise 
us ; but, as a rule, they are like themselves. Even when 



2 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

they develop and seem to change, they are apt, under 
the stress of action, to return to their aboriginal 
character, and to exhibit it in their old historic fashion. 
To attempt, then, to give an account of any national 
struggle, without paying attention to the influence of 
the characteristic spirit of the country or countries 
concerned, would be a difficult undertaking, and a 
mistaken one. Even in a short crisis, a great people 
will probably display its historic colours, and in a long 
one it certainly will. To ignore this, to describe national 
actions without giving a sense of the animating spirit, 
would be not only a tame and inadequate method ; it 
would lower the value of life itself by making mere 
prose of what should, by right, partake of the nature 
of poetry. History cannot often be entirely poetical, 
or poetry entirely historical. When Homer told the 
tale of Troy, he did not make prose — or even history — 
of it. He everywhere infused into it ' an incomparable 
ardour' — he made an epic. But Mr. Thomas Hardy 
wrote history in ' The Dynasts,' and made it an epic 
too. An epic— the common definition tells us — is 
6 a theme of action treated in heroic proportions and 
style.' ' The Dynasts' certainly is that — the struggle 
is great, the issues are great, the men are great. Even 
more than their heroic fighting, their speech and manners 
in the moment of action are such as to show unfailingly 
by what a distinctive and ever-present spirit national 
life may be sustained and magnified. 

When we come to nearer times, and more familiar 
events, the same necessity is upon us. What writer of 
artistic sense, or scientific honesty, would touch, for ex- 
ample, the history of modern Egypt without attempting 
to understand the character of such men as Gordon and 



THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR 3 

Cromer, and the spirit which (however personal and 
diverse in its manifestations) they both drew from the 
nation that sent them forth ? Such an understanding 
would enable the narrator to carry us all with him. 
For every man of our national birth and breeding 
would feel, when he was told the story of such heroes, 
not only their superiority but their likeness to himself. 
' There,' he would say, ' but for lack of fortune, or 
opportunity, or courage, or stature, there goes John 
Smith. 5 It is admiration which helps us to feel that, 
and a mean spirit which conceals it from us. 

Further, it is my belief that the historian who would 
deal adequately with our present War must have an 
even wider understanding and sympathy. He must 
have a broad enough view to recognise all the various 
motives which impelled us, section by section, to enter 
the struggle ; and a deep enough insight to perceive 
that, below all motives which can be expressed or de- 
bated in ^ords, there was an instinct — a spontaneous 
emotion — which irresistibly stirred the majority of our 
people, and made us a practically unanimous nation. 
He must be able to see that this unanimity was no 
freak — no sudden outburst — but the natural fulfilment 
of a strong and long -trained national character ; and 
he must trace, with grateful admiration, the national 
service contributed by many diverse classes, and by a 
large number of distinguished men — the leaders and 
patterns of the rest. However scientific the historian's 
judgments, and however restrained his style, it must be 
impossible for any reader to miss the real point of 
the narrative — the greatness of the free nations, and 
the nobility of their heroes. Belgians, Serbians, French, 
Italians, Americans— all must hear their great men 



4 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

honoured, and their corporate virtues generously 
recognised. We Britons, for our own part, must feel, 
at every mention of the names of our champions, the 
fine sting of the invisible fire with which true glory 
burns the heart. It must never be possible to read, with- 
out an uplifting of the spirit, the achievements of com- 
manders like Smith-Dorrien, Haig, and Birdwood — 
Plumer and Rawlinson, AlJenby and Byng, and Home ; 
or the fate of Cradock and Kitchener ; or the sea-fights 
of Beatty and Sturdee, of Keyes and Tyrwhitt. It 
must be clear, from the beginning to the end of the 
vast record, that the British blood has equalled and 
surpassed its ancient fame — that in every rank the old 
virtues of courage, coolness, and endurance, of ordered 
energy and human kindliness, have been, not the 
occasional distinction, but the common characteristics 
of our men. Look where you will on the scene of war, 
you must be shown ' a theme of action treated in 
heroic proportions and style' — fit, at least, to indicate 
the greatness of the national spirit. 

In this book our concern is with the war at sea, 
and with a part only of that gigantic effort. But of 
this part, every word that has been said holds good. 
The submarine and anti-submarine campaign is not a 
series of minor operations. Its history is not a mere 
episode among chapters of greater significance. On the 
contrary, the fate of Britain, and the fate of Germany, 
were speedily seen to be staked upon the issue of this 
particular contest, as they have been staked upon no 
other part of the world-wide struggle. The entrance 
of America into the fellowship of nations was involved 
in it. The future of civilisation depends upon it. More- 
over, in its course the British seaman has shown him- 



THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR 5 

self possessed, in the highest degree, of the qualities by 
which his forefathers conquered and kept our naval 
predominance ; and finally, it is in the submarine 
war that we see most sharply the contrast of the spirit 
of chivalry with the spirit of savagery ; of the law of 
humanity with the lawlessness of brute force ; of the 
possible redemption of social life with its irretrievable 
degradation. It is a subject worthy, thrice over, of 
treatment in a national epic. 

The present book is not an epic — it is not a poetical 
work at all. Half of it is mere technical detail ; and 
the rest plain fact plainly told. But it is far from my 
intention that the sense of admiration for national 
heroes, or the recognition of national greatness, shall 
be absent from it. I have used few epithets; for they 
seemed to me needless and inadequate. The stories 
of the voyages and adventures of our own submarines, 
and of the fighting of our men against the pirates, need 
no heightening. They need only to be read and under- 
stood ; and it is chiefly with a view to their better 
understanding, that the reader is offered a certain 
amount of eomment and description in the earlier 
chapters. But a suggestion or two may be made here, 
at the very beginning, in the hope of starting a train 
of thought which may accompany the narrative with 
a whisper of historic continuity — a reminder that as 
with men, so with nations — none becomes utterly base 
on a sudden, or utterly heroic. Their vices and their 
virtues are the harvesting of their past. 

Let us take a single virtue, like courage, which 
is common to all nations but shows under a different 
form or colour in each, and so becomes a national 
characteristic, plainly visible in action. A historical 



6 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

study of British courage would, I believe, show two 
facts : first, that the peculiar quality of it has persisted 
for centuries ; and, secondly, that if our people have 
changed at all in this respect, they have only changed 
in the direction of greater uniformity. Once they 
had two kinds of courage in war ; now they have but 
one, and that by far the better one. In the old days, 
among the cool and determined captains of our race, 
there were always a certain number of hot heads — * men 
of courage without discipline, of enthusiasm without 
reason, of will without science.' The best of them, like 
Sir Richard Grenville, had the luck to die conspicuously, 
in their great moments, and so to leave us an example 
of the spirit that defies odds, and sets men above the 
fear of death. The rest led their men into mad ad- 
ventures, where they perished to the injury of their 
cause. Most Englishmen can understand the pure 
joy of onset, the freedom of the moment when every- 
thing has been given for the hope of winning one ob- 
jective ; but it has been the more characteristic way 
of our people— at any rate for the last five centuries— 
to double courage with coolness, and fight not only 
their hardest but their best. From Cressy to Waterloo, 
and from Mons to Arras, we have won many battles 
by standing steadily and shooting the attack to pieces. 
Charges our men have made, but under discipline and 
in the nick of opportunity. The Black Prince charged 
fiercely at Poitiers; but it was only when he had 
broken three attacks, and saw his chance to win. The 
charge of the Worcesters at Gheluvelt, the charge of 
the Oxfords at Nonneboschen, and a hundred more 
like them, were as desperate as any c ride of death ' ; 
but they were neither reckless nor useless, they were 



THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR 7 

simply the heroic move to win the game. Still more 
is this the rule- at sea. Beatty at Jutland, like Nelson 
and Collingwood at Trafalgar, played an opening in 
which he personally risked annihilation ; but nothing 
was ever done with greater coolness, or more admirable 
science. The perfect picture of all courage is, perhaps, 
a great British warship in action ; for there you have, 
among a thousand men, one spirit of elation, of fear- 
lessness, of determination, backed by trained skill and 
a self -forgetful desire to apply it in the critical moment. 
The submarine, and the anti-submarine ship, trawler 
or patrol-boat are, on a smaller scale, equally perfect 
examples; for there is no hour of their cruise when 
they are not within call of the critical moment. In 
the trenches, in the air, in the fleet, you will see the 
same steady skilful British courage almost universally 
exemplified. But in the submarine war, the discipline 
needed is even more absolute, the skill even more 
delicate, the ardour even more continuous and self- 
forgetful ; and all these demands are even more com- 
pletely fulfilled. 

This is fortunate, and doubly fortunate ; for the 
submarine war has proved to be the main battlefield 
of our spiritual crusade, as well as a vital military 
campaign. The men engaged in it have been marked 
out by fate, as our champions in the contest of ideals. 
They are the patterns and defenders of human nature in 
war, against those who preach and practise barbarism. 
Here — and nowhere else so clearly as here — the world 
has seen the death struggle between the two spirits 
now contending for the future of mankind. Between 
the old chivalry, and the new savagery, there can be 
no more truce ; one of the two must go under, and the 



8 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

barbarians knew it when they cried Weltmacht oder 
Niedergang. Of the spirit of the German nation it 
is not necessary to say much. Everything that could 
be charged against them has been already proved, by 
their own words and actions. They have sunk with- 
out warning women and children, doctors and nurses* 
neutrals and wounded men, not by tens or hundreds 
but by thousands. They have publicly rejoiced over 
these murders with medals and flags, with songs and 
school holidays. They have not only broken the rules 
of international law; they have with unparalleled 
cruelty, after sinking even neutral ships, shot and 
drowned the crews in open boats, that they might 
leave no trace of their crimes. The men who have 
done — and are still doing — these things have courage 
of a kind. They face danger and hardship to a certain 
point, though, by their own account, in the last extreme 
they fail to show the dignity and sanity with which 
our own men meet death. But their peculiar defect 
is not one of nerve, but of spirit. They lack that 
instinct which, with all civilised races, intervenes, even 
in the most violent moment of conflict or desperation, 
and reminds the combatant that there are blows which 
it is not lawful to strike in any circumstances whatever. 
This instinct — the religion of all chivalrous peoples — 
is connected by some with humanity, by some with 
courtesy, by ourselves with sport. In this matter 
we are all in the right. The savage in conflict thinks 
of nothing but his own violent will ; the civilised and 
the chivalrous are always conscious of the fact that 
there are other rights in the world beside their own. 
The humane man forbears his enemy ; the courteous 
man respects him, as one with rights like his own ; the 



THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR 9 

man with the instinct of sport knows that he must 
not snatch success by destroying the very game itself. 
The civilised nation will not hack its way to victory 
through the ruins of human life. It will be restrained, 
if by no other consideration, yet at least by the re- 
collection that it is but one member of a human* fellow- 
ship, and that the greatness of a part can never be 
achieved by the corruption of the whole. 

The German nature is not only devoid of this 
instinct, it is roused to fury by the thought of it. Any 
act, however cruel and barbarous, if only it tends 
to defeat the enemies of Germany, is a good deed, a 
brave act, and to be commended. The German general 
who lays this down is supported by the German pro- 
fessor who adds : ' The spontaneous and elementary 
hatred towards England is rooted in the deepest depths 
of our own being — there, where considerations of reason 
do not count, where the irrational, the instinct, alone 
dominates. We hate in the English the hostile principle 
of our innermost and highest nature. And it is well 
that we are fully aware of this, because we touch 
therein the vital meaning of this War.' Before the 
end comes, the barbarian will find this hostile principle, 
and will hate it, in the French, the Italians, the Ameri- 
cans — in the whole fellowship of nations against which 
he is fighting with savage fury. But, to our satisfaction, 
he has singled us out first ; for, when we hear him, we 
too are conscious of a spontaneous hatred in the depths 
of our being ; and we see that in this we do ' touch the 
vital meaning of this War.' 



CHAPTER II 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 

Many are the fables which the Germans have done 
their best to pass off for truth among the spectators 
of the present War ; but not one is more wilfully and 
demonstrably false, than their account of the origin 
of the submarine. According to the story which they 
have endeavoured to spread among the unthinking 
public in neutral countries, the under-sea boat—the 
arm with which they claim to have revolutionised 
naval warfare— is the product of German ingenuity 
and skill. The French, they say, had merely played 
with the idea ; their submarines were costly toys, 
dangerous only to those who tried to navigate 
them. The Americans had shown some promise half 
a_ century ago ; but having since become a pacifist 
race of dollar-hunters, they had lost interest in war, 
and their boats would be found useless in practice. 
As for the British, the day of their naval power was 
past ; they had spent their time and money upon the 
mania for big ships, and neglected the more scientific 
vessel, the submarine, which had made the big ships 
obsolete in a single year's campaign. The ship of the 
future, the U-boat, was the national weapon of 
Germany alone. 

The claim was unjustified ; but, so far, it was not— 

10 



EVOLUTION OF TIIE SUBMARINE 11 

to an uninstructed neutral — obviously unjustified. The 
Americans were not yet at war ; the submarines of 
France and Britain were hardly ever heard of. Our 
boats had few targets, and their operations were still 
further restricted by the rules of international law, 
which we^cohtinued to keep, though our enemies did 
not. Moreover, whatever our Service did achieve 
was done secretly ; and even our successes were 
announced so briefly and vaguely as to make no im- 
pression. The result was that the Germans were able 
to make out a plausible title to the ' command of the 
sea beneath the surface ' ; and they even gained a 
hearing for the other half of their claim, which was 
unsupported by any evidence whatever. The sub- 
marine is not, in its origin, of German invention ; 
the idea of submarine war was not a German idea, 
nor have Germans contributed anything of value to 
the long process of experiment and development by 
which the idea has been made to issue in practical 
under-water navigation From beginning to end, the 
Germans have played their characteristic part. They 
have been behind their rivals in intelligence; they 
have relied on" imitation of the work of others ; on 
discoveries methodically borrowed and adapted ; and 
when they have had to trust to their own abilities,^they 
have never passed beyond mediocrity. They have 
shown originality in one direction only — their ruthless 
disregard of law and humanity. These statements 
are not the outcome of partisanship, but of a frank 
study of the facts. They are clearly proved by the 
history of submarine war. 

That history may be said to begin with the second 
half of tho sixteenth century, when the two main 



12 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

principles or aims of submarine war were first set forth — 
both by English seamen. Happily the records remain. 
Sir William Monson, one of Queen Elizabeth's admirals, 
in his famous ' Naval Tracts/ suggests that a powerful 
ship may be sunk much more easily by an under-water 
shot than by ordinary gunfire. His plan is ' to place 
a cannon in the hold of a bark, with her mouth to the 
side of the ship : the bark shall board, and then to give 
fire to the cannon that is stowed under water, and 
they shall both instantly sink : the man that shall 
execute this stratagem may escape in a small boat 
hauled the other side of the bark.' 

This is the germinal idea from which sprang the 
submarine mine or torpedo ; and the first design for 
a submarine boat was also produced by the English 
Navy in the same generation. The author of this was 
William Bourne, who had served as a gunner under 
Sir William Monson. His invention is described in 
his book of ' Inventions or Devices ' published in 
1578, and is remarkable for its proposed method of 
solving the problem of submersion. This is to be 
achieved by means of two side-tanks, into which water 
can be admitted through perforations, and from which 
it can be blown out again by forcing the inner side 
of each tank outwards. These false sides are made 
tight with leather suckers, and moved by winding 
hand-screws — a crude and inefficient mechanism, but 
a proof that the problem had been correctly grasped. 
For a really practical solution of this, and the many 
other difficulties involved in submarine navigation, 
the resources of applied science were then hopelessly 
inadequate. It was not until after more than three 
hundred years of experiment that inventors were in a 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 13 

position to command a mechanism that would carry 
out their ideas effectively. 

The record of these three centuries of experiment is 
full of interest ; for it shows us a long succession of 
courageous men taking up, one after another, the same 
group of scientific problems and bringing them, in 
spite of all dangers and disasters, gradually nearer 
to a final solution. Many nations contributed to 
the work, but especially the British, the American, 
the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, the Swedish, the 
Russian, and the Italian. The part played by each 
of them has been, on the whole, characteristic. The 
British were the first, as practical seamen, to put 
forward the original idea, gained from the experience 
of their rivalry with Spain. They have also succeeded, 
at the end of the experimental period, in making the 
best combined use of the results of the long collabora- 
tion. A Dutchman built the first practical submarine, 
and achieved the first successful dive. The Americans 
have made the greatest number of inventions, and of 
daring experiments in earlier wars. The French have 
shown, as a nation, the strongest interest in the idea, 
and their navy was effectively armed with submarines 
ten years before that of any other Power. To them, 
to the Dutch, and to the Italians, the credit belongs 
of that indispensable invention, the optic tube or 
periscope. The Swedes and Russians have the great 
names of Nordenfelt and Drzewiecki to their credit. 
The Germans alone, among the eight or nine nations 
interested in the science of naval war, have from first 
to last contributed almost nothing to the evolution 
of the submarine. The roll of submarine inventors 
includes about 175 names, of which no less than 60 



14 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

belong to the English-speaking peoples, but only six 
to Germany. Among these six, the name of Bauer 
is remembered as that of a courageous experimenter, 
persevering through a career of repeated failures ; but 
neither he, nor any of his fellow countrymen, advanced 
the common cause by the suggestion of a single idea 
of value. Finally, when the German Admiralty, after 
the failure of their own Howaldt boat, decided to 
borrow the Holland type from America, it was no 
German, but the Franco-Spanish engineer d'Equevilley, 
who designed for them the first five U-boats, of which 
all the later ones are modifications. The English 
Admiralty were in no such straits. They were only 
one year before the Germans in adopting the Holland 
type ; but the native genius at their disposal has 
enabled them to keep ahead of their rivals from that 
day to this, in the design, efficiency, size, and number 
of their submarine vessels. And this result is exactly 
what might have been expected from the history of 
submarine invention. 

The construction of a workable submarine depends 
upon the discovery and solution of a number of problems, 
the first five of which may be said to be the problems 
of— 

1. Submersion. 

2. Stability. 

3. Habitability. 

4. Propulsion and Speed. 

5. Offensive Action. 

If we take these in order, and trace the steps by which 
the final solution was approached, we shall be able to 
confirm what has been said about the work contributed 
by successive inventors. 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 15 

1. Submersion. — We have seen that for submersion 
and return to the surface, Bourne had at the very^ 
beginning devised the side-tank to which water could 
be admitted, and from which it could be ' blown out ' 
at will. Bushnell, a remarkable inventor of British- 
American birth, substituted a hand-pump in his boat 
of 1771, for the mechanism proposed by Bourne. In 
1795, Armand-Maiziere, a Frenchman, designed a steam 
submarine vessel to be worked by ' a number of oars 
vibrating on the principle of a bird's wing.' Of these 
' wings,' one lot were intended to make the boat sub- 
merge. Nothing came of this proposal, and for more 
than a century tanks and pumps remained the sole 
means of submersion. In 1893 Haydon, an American, 
invented a submarine for the peaceful purpose of 
exploring the ocean bed. Its most important feature 
was the method of submersion. This was accomplished 
by means of an interior cylindrical tank, with direct 
access to the sea, and fitted with two powerfully geared 
pistons. By simply drawing the pistons in, or pushing 
them out, the amount of water ballast could be nicely 
regulated, and the necessity for compressed air or other 
expellants was avoided. This device would have given 
great satisfaction to William Bourne, the Elizabethan 
gunner, whose original idea, after more than two 
centuries, it carried out successfully. Finally, in 1900, 
the American inventor, Simon Lake, in his Argonaut II., 
introduced a new method of diving. For the reduction 
of the vessel's flotability he employed the usual tanks ; 
but for ' travelling ' between the surface and the 
bottom, he made use of ' four big hydroplanes, two 
on each side, that steer the boat either down or up.' 
Similar hydroplanes, or horizontal rudders, appeared 



16 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

in the later Holland boats, and are now in common 
use in all submarine types. 

Lake was of British descent, his family having 
emigrated from Wales to New Jersey ; but he owed 
his first interest in submarine construction, and many 
of his inventive ideas, to the brilliant French writer, 
Jules Verne, whose book ' Twenty Thousand Leagues 
under the Sea ' came by chance into his hands when 
he was a boy ten years old, and made a lasting impres- 
sion upon him. 

2. Stability. — Next to the power of submersion, the 
most necessary quality in a submarine is that of stability 
under water. The most obvious method of securing this 
is by water ballast, which was probably the first means 
actually employed. Bushnell, in 1771, substituted 
a heavy weight of lead, as being more economical of 
space and better suited to the shape of his boat, which 
resembled a turtle in an upright position. The leaden 
ballast, being detachable at will, also acted as a safety 
weight, to be dropped at a moment of extreme urgencjr. 
In the Nautilus, built in 1800 by the famous engineer, 
Robert Fulton, an American of English' birth and 
education, the leaden weight reappeared as a keel, 
and was entirely effective. The inventor, in a trial j t 
Brest in 1801, dived to a depth of 25 feet, and performed 
successful evolutions in different directions for over an 
hour. Bauer, fifty j^ears later, returned to the ballast 
principle, and used both a water-tank and a safety 
weight in the same boat. The results were disastrous. 
His first submarine sank at her first trial in Kiel harbour, 
and was never refloated. His second was built in 
England ; but this, too, sank, w T ith great loss of life. His 
third, Le Diable Marin, after several favourable trials 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 17 

at Cronstadt, fouled her propeller in a bed of seaweed, 
and the releasing of the safety weights only resulted 
in bringing her bows to the surface. The crew escaped 
with difficulty, and the vessel then sank. 

Three years later, in 1861, Olivier Riou designed 
two boats, in both of which stability was to be preserved 
automatically by the device of a double hull. The 
two cylinders which composed it, one within the other, 
were not fixed immovably to one another, but were 
on rollers, so that if the outer hull rolled to the right 
the inner rolled to the left. By this counterbalancing 
effect, it was estimated that the stability of the vessel 
would be absolutely secured ; but nothing is recorded 
of the trials of these boats. The celebrated French 
inventors, Bourgois and Brun, reintroduced the prin- 
ciple of water-tanks combined with a heavy iron ballast 
keel. But in 1881, the Rev. W. Garrett, the English 
designer of the Nordenfelt boats, invented a new 
automatic mechanism for ensuring stability. This 
consisted of two vertical rudders with a heavy pendulum 
weight so attached to them that, if the boat dipped out 
of the horizontal, the pendulum swung down and gave 
the rudders an opposite slant which raised the vessel 
again to a horizontal position. This arrangement, 
though perfect in theory, in practice developed fatal 
defects, and subsequent types have all returned to the 
use of water-tanks, made to compensate, by elaborate 
but trustworthy mechanism, for every loss or addition 
of weight. 

3. Habitability. — For the habitability of a sub- 
marine the prime necessity is a supply of air capable 
of supporting life during the period of submersion. 
The first actual constructor of a submarine, Cornelius 



18 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

van Drebbel, of Alkmaar, in Holland, was fully aware 
of this problem, and claimed to have solved it, not by 
mechanical but by chemical means. His improved 
boat, built in England about 1622, carried twelve 
rowers, besides passengers, among whom King James I. 
is said to have been included on one occasion, and was 
successfully navigated for several hours at a depth of 
ten to fifteen feet. ' Drebbel conceived,' says Robert 
Boyle, in 1662, ' that 'tis not the whole body of the air, 
but a certain Quintessence (as Chymists speake) or 
spirituous part of it that makes it fit for respiration, 
which being spent, the grosser body or carcase (if 
I may so call it) of the Air, is unable to cherish the vital 
flame residing in the heart : so that (for aught I could 
gather) besides the Mechanical contrivance of his 
vessel he had a Chymical liquor, which he accounted 
the chief secret of his Submarine Navigation. For 
when from time to time, he perceived that the finer 
and purer part of the Air was consumed or over-clogged 
by the respiration and steames of those that went in 
his ship, he would, by unstopping a vessel full of the 
liquor, speedily restore to the troubled air such a 
proportion of vital parts as would make it again for a 
good while fit for Respiration.' 

Drebbel, who was a really scientific man, may 
possibly have discovered this chemical secret. If 
so, he anticipated by more than 200 years a very im- 
portant device now in use in all submarines, and in 
any case he was the originator of the idea. But his 
son-in-law, a German named KufHer, who attempted 
after Drebbel's death to exploit his submarine in- 
ventions, was a man of inferior ability, and either 
ignorant of the secret or incapable of utilising it. For 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 19 

another century and a half, submarine designers con- 
tented themselves with the small supply of air which 
was carried down at the time of submersion. Even 
the Turtle — BushnelPs boat of 1776, which has been 
described as ' the first submarine craft which really 
navigated under serious conditions ' — was only built 
to hold one man with a sufficient supply of air for 
half an hour's submersion. This was a bare minimum 
of habitability, and Fulton, twenty-five years later, 
found it necessary to equip his Nautilus with a com- 
pressed air apparatus. Even with this, the crew of 
two could only be supplied for one hour. In 1827, 
the very able French designer, Castera, took out a 
patent for a submarine life-boat, to which air was to 
be supplied by a tube from the surface, protected by 
a float, from which the whole vessel was suspended. 
The danger here was from the possible entry of water 
through the funnel, and the. boat, though planned with 
great ingenuity, was never actually tried. Bauer, in 
1855, fitted his Didble Marin with large water-tubes, 
running for thirty feet along the top of the boat and 
pierced with small holes from which, when desired, 
a continual rain could be made to fall. This shower- 
bath had a purifying effect on the vitiated air, but it 
had obvious disadvantages; and there is no record 
of its having been put into actual use before the un- 
fortunate vessel sank, as before related. In the same 
year, a better principle was introduced by Babbage, 
an English inventor, who designed a naval diving- 
bell, fitted with three cylinders of compressed air. His 
method was followed by Bourgois and Brun, whose boats 
of 1863-5 carried steel reservoirs with compressed 
air, at a pressure of at least 15 atmospheres. The 



20 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

principle was now established, and was adopted in 
Holland and Lake boats, and in all subsequent 
types, with the addition of chemical treatment of the 
vitiated air. 

4. Propulsion. — The various solutions of this pro- 
blem have naturally followed the successive steps in 
the development of machinery. Drebbel made use of 
oars. Bushnell, though he speaks of ' an oar,' goes 
on to describe it as ' formed upon the principle of the 
screw — its axis entered the vessel, and being turned one 
way rowed the vessel forward, but being turned the 
other way rowed it backward : it was made to be 
turned by the hand or foot.' Moreover, he had a 
similar ' oar ' placed at the top of the vessel, which 
helped it to ascend or descend in the water. The con- 
clusion seems unavoidable that to this designer belongs 
the honour of having invented the screw propeller, 
and also of having put it into successful operation. 
Fulton adopted the same method of propeller and 
hand-winch in his Nautilus ; but his huge vessel, the 
Mule, built in 1814 to carry 100 men, was driven by 
a silent steam-engine. He died during the trials of 
this boat, and further experiment with it seems to 
have been abandoned, possibly owing to the great 
interest excited by his first war steamer, which was 
building at the same time. A regrettable set-back 
was thus caused. For forty, years no one experimented 
with any kind of propulsory engine. Bauer, in 1855, 
could devise no better method of working his propeller 
than a system of 7-foot wheels, turned by a pair of men 
running on a treadmill. At the same moment, how- 
ever, a more fruitful genius was at work. A French 
professor, Marie-Davy, designed a submarine in which 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 21 

the propeller was driven by an electro-magnetic engine 
placed in the stern of the ship, with batteries forward. 
The idea was a valuable one, with a great future before 
it, though for the moment it achieved no visible 
success. A year later, in 1855. the famous British 
engineer, James Nasmyth, designed a ' submerged 
mortar,' which was in reality a ram of great weight 
and thickness, capable of being submerged level with 
the surface, and driven at a speed of over 10 knots 
by a steam-engine with a single high-pressure boiler. 
But in spite of the simplicity and power of this boat, 
it was finally rejected as being neither invisible nor 
invulnerable to an armed enemy ; and in their desire 
to obtain complete submersion, the French inventors 
of the next few years — Hubault. Conseil, and Masson — 
all returned to the hand- winch method of propulsion. 
Riou, however, in 1861, adopted steam for one of his 
boats, and electric power for the other ; and in 1883 
the American engineer, Alstitt, built the first submarine 
fitted with both steam and electricity. Steam was 
also used in the Plongeur of Bourgois and Brun, which 
was completed in the same year. 

The American Civil War then gave a great oppor- 
tunity for practical experiments in torpedo attack ; 
but the difficulty of wholly submerged navigation not 
having been yet solved, the boats used were not true 
submarines, but submersibles. Their propulsion was 
by steam, and their dimensions small. A more 
ambitious invention was put forward in 1869 by a 
German, Otto Vogel, whose design was accepted by 
the Prussian Government. His submersible steam- 
ship was to be heavily armed, and was ' considered the 
equal of a first-class iron-clad in defensive and offensive 



22 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

powers.' These powers, however, never came into 
operation. 

Inventors now returned to the designing of true 
submarines ; and after the Frenchman, Constantin, the 
American, Halstead, and the Russian, Drzewiecki, 
had all made the best use they could of the hand-winch 
or the pedal for propulsion, three very interesting 
attempts were made in 1877-8 to secure a more satis- 
factory engine. Olivier's boat, patented in May 1877-8, 
was to be propelled by the gases generated from the 
ignition of high explosives, the massed vapours escaping 
through a tube at the stern. This ingenious method 
was, however, too dangerous for practical use. Surman's 
design of 1878 included a propeller, rotated by com- 
pressed air. But the English boat of the same date, 
Garrett's Resurgam, was much the most noteworthy of 
the three, and introduced a method which may in the 
future be brought to perfection with great results. In 
this boat, the motive force was steam, and propulsion 
under water, as well as on the surface, was aimed at 
and actually attained. In her trials, the vessel showed 
herself capable of navigating under water for a distance 
of 12 miles, by getting up a full head of steani in a very 
powerful boiler, with the aid of a blower, before diving ; 
then by shutting the fire-door and chimney, and utilising 
the latent heat as long as it would last. When the heat 
was exhausted, it was, of course, necessary to return 
to the surface, slow up the fire again and recharge the 
boiler with water. The vessel was remarkably success- 
ful, and had the great merit of showing no track what- 
ever when moving under water. She was lost by an 
accident, but not until she had impressed Nordenfelt, 
the Swedish inventor, so strongly that he secured the 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 23 

services of her designer, Garrett, for the building of 
his own submarine boats. The first of these appeared 
in 1881. 

In the same year were patented Woodhouse's 
submarine, driven by compressed air, and Genoud's, 
with a gas-engine worked by hydrogen, which is said 
to have attained a speed of between four and five knots. 
Blakesley, in 1884, proposed to use steam raised in a 
fireless boiler heated by a chemical composition. In 1884, 
too, Drzewiecki produced the fourth of his ingenious 
little boats, driven this time not by pedals but by an 
electric motor. His example was followed by Tuck of 
San Francisco shortly afterwards, and by Campbell 
and Ash in their Nautilus, which in 1886 underwent 
very successful trials in the West Indian Docks at 
Tilbury, near London. In 1886 D'Allest, the celebrated 
French engineer, designed a submarine fitted with a 
petrol combustion engine. But the question of pro- 
pulsion may be said to have been finally settled, within 
a few months after this, in favour of the electro-motor. 
For Gustave Zede's famous Gymnote, which was actually 
put on the stocks in April 1887, attained in practice a 
surface speed of 10 knots, and a maximum of 7 to 
8 under water. This success saved future designers 
the trouble of further experiments with ingenious 
futilities. 

5. Offensive Action. — We have so far been considering 
the development of the submarine as a vessel navigable 
under water, without reference to the purpose of offence 
in war. But this purpose was from the first in view ; 
and with almost all the inventors recorded, it formed 
the main incentive of their efforts. The evolution of 
the submarine weapon has been much simpler, and more 



24 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

regular, than that of the vessel which was to use it ; 
but it has been equally wonderful, and the history of 
it is equally instructive. Briefly, the French, in this 
department as in the other, have shown the most 
imaginative enthusiasm, the Americans the greatest 
determination to achieve results — even with crude or 
dangerous means — while the English have to their 
credit both the earliest attempts in actual war, and the 
final achievement of the automobile torpedo. Of the 
Germans, as before, we must record that they have 
contributed nothing of any scientific value. 

Sir William Monson's device of a bark, with an 
under-water cannon and an accompanying boat was 
soon developed by the English navy into the more 
practicable mine, self-contained and floating, to be 
towed by boat or submarine. In January, 1626, the 
King gave a warrant to the Master of the Ordnance, 
6 for the making of divers water-mines, water-petards, 
and boates to goe under water.' In June of the same 
year, the Duke of Buckingham, then commanding 
the naval expedition for the relief of La Rochelle, issued 
a warrant for the delivery of 50 water-mynes, 290 water- 
petards, and 2 boates to conduct them under water.' 
Pepys in his 'Diary' for March 14, 1662, mentions 
a proposal by Kufrler of an ' engine to blow up ships.' 
He adds, ' We doubted not the matter of fact, it being 
tried in Cromwell's time, but the safety of carrying 
them in ships ; ' and probably this distrust of Drebbel's 
German subordinate proved to be justified, for nothing 
more is heard of the design. The attempt referred to 
as made ' in Cromwell's time ' may have been Prince 
Rupert's attack on Blake's flagship, the Leopard, in 
1650. The engine then used was not a submarine one 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 25 

but an infernal machine, concealed in an oil-barrel, 
brought alongside in a shore boat by men disguised 
as Portuguese, and intended to be hoisted on board the 
ship and then fired by a trigger and string. A more 
ingenious 8 ship-destroying engine ' was devised by the 
Marquess of Worcester in 1655. This was evidently 
a clock-machine, for it might be affixed to a ship either 
inside, by stealth, or outside by a diver, ' and at an 
appointed minute, though a week after, either day or 
night, it shall infallibly sink that ship.' 

The clock machine was actually first tried in action 
in 1776 by Bushnell, or rather by Sergeant Lee, whom 
he employed to work his Turtle for him. The attack 
by this submarine upon the Eagle, a British 64-gun 
ship lying in the Hudson River, was very nearly success- 
ful. The Turtle reached the enemy's stern unobserved, 
carrying a mine or magazine of 150 lbs. of powder, 
and provided with a detachable wood-screw which was 
to be turned until it bit firmly on the ship's side. The 
mine was then to be attached to it, and the clockwork 
set going. The wood- screw, however, bit upon some iron 
fittings instead of wood, and failed to hold ; the tide 
also was too strong for Lee, who had to work the wood- 
screw and the propeller at the same time. He came 
to the surface, was chased by a guard-boat, and dived 
again, abandoning his torpedo, which drifted and blew 
up harmlessly when the clockwork ran down. Lee 
escaped, but the Turtle was soon afterwards caught and 
sunk by the British. Bushnell himself, in the follow- 
ing year, attacked the Cerberus with a c machine ' 
consisting of a trigger-mine towed by a whale-boat. 
He was detected, and his mine captured by a British 
schooner, the crew of which, after hauling the machine 



26 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

on deck, accidentally exploded it themselves, three 
out of the four of them being killed. 

In 1802 Fulton's Nautilus, in her trials at Brest, 
succeeded in blowing up a large boat in the harbour. 
In 1814 his submersible, the Mute, was armed with 
6 columbiads,' or immensely strong under-water guns, 
which had previously been tried with success on an old 
hulk. Similar guns were tried nearly fifty years later 
by the Spanish submarine designer Monturiol. But the 
offensive weapon of the period was the mine, and the 
ingenuity of inventors was chiefly directed to methods 
of affixing it to the side or bottom of the ship to be 
destroyed. One of these was the use of long gloves 
of leather or rubber, protruding from the interior of 
the submarine, invented by Castera in 1827, and adopted 
by Bauer, Drzewiecki, and Garrett in succession. But 
the device was both unhandy and dangerous ; there 
would often be great difficulty in manoeuvring the 
boat into a position in which the gloves would be avail- 
able, and they could not be made thick enough to 
withstand the pressure of any depth of water. Practical 
military instinct demanded a method of launching the 
mine or torpedo against the target, and the first attempts 
were made by placing a trigger-mine at the end of a spar 
carried by the nose of the attacking boat. In October, 
1863, during the American Civil War, the forts of 
Charleston were in danger from the accurate fire of 
the Federal battleship Ironsides, and Lieut. Glassell 
was ordered to attack her in the submarine David. 
He had no difficulty in getting near his enemy and 
exploding his torpedo, but he had misjudged his distance* 
and only succeeded in deluging the Ironsides with a 
column of water. The submarine was herself severely 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 27 

injured by the explosion and had to be abandoned. A 
second David, commanded by Lieut. Dixon, in February, 
1864, attacked the Housatonic, off the same harbour, 
and in spite of the greatest vigilance on the part of 
Admiral Dahlgren's officers, succeeded in reaching the 
side of the battleship, where she lay for the space of a 
minute making sure of her contact. The mine was then 
fired : the Housatonic rose on a great wave, listed 
heavily, and sank at once. The David, too, disappeared, 
and it was found three years afterwards that she had 
been irresistibly sucked into the hole made in her 
enemy's side. After this, experiments were made with 
drifting and towing mines, and with buoyant mines 
to be released at a depth below the enemy's keel ; but 
by 1868 the invention of the automobile torpedo by 
the English engineer, Whitehead, of Fiume, solved the 
problem of the submarine offensive in the most sudden 
and conclusive manner. 

The Torpedo. — Whitehead's success arose out of 
the failure of an enterprising Austrian officer, Captain 
Lupuis, who had been trying to steer, a small fireship 
along the surface of the water by means of ropes from 
a fixed base either on shore or in a parent ship. The 
plan was a crude one and was rejected by the Austrian 
naval authorities ; it was then entrusted to Whitehead, 
who found it incapable of any practical realisation. 
He was, however, impressed with Lupuis' belief in the 
value of a weapon which could be operated from a 
distance, and though he failed in designing a con- 
trollable vessel, he conceived the idea of an automobile 
torpedo, and, after two years' work, constructed it in 
a practical form. It has been spoken of as ' the only 
invention that was perfect when devised,' and it certainly 



28 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

came very near perfection at the first attempt, but 
it was erratic and could not be made to keep its depth. 
In 1868, however, Whitehead invented the ' balance- 
chamber,' which remedied these defects, and brought 
two finished torpedoes to England for trial. They were 
fired by compressed air from a submerged tube, and 
at once proved capable of averaging 7 J to 8| knots 
up to 600 yards and of striking a ship under way up 
to 200 yards. The target, an old corvette in the Med- 
way, was sunk on to the mud by the first shot, at 136 
yards, and immediately after the trials the British 
Government bought the secret, and other rights. 
Imitations were, of course, soon attempted in other 
countries, and a type, called the Schwartzkopf, was 
for some years manufactured in Berlin and used in the 
German and Spanish navies ; it was also tried by the 
Italians and Japanese, but it failed in the end to hold 
its own against the Whitehead. 

The automobile torpedo was at first used only for 
the armament of ordinary warships ; it was not until 
]879 that an American engineer named Mortensen 
designed a submarine with a torpedo-tube in the bows. 
His example was followed by Berkeley and Hotchkiss 
in 1880, by Garrett in his first Nordenfelt boat of 1881, 
and by Woodhouse and by Lagane in the same year. 
Even after this Drzewiecki, Tuck, and D'Allest designed 
their submarines without torpedo-tubes, but they were, 
in fact, indispensable, and the use of the Whitehead 
torpedo has been for the last twenty years assumed 
as the main function of all submarines designed for war. 

The Submarine in War. — The difficulties of con- 
struction, propulsion, and armament having now been 
solved, the submarine at last took its place among the 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 29 

types of warships in the annual lists. From the first 
England and France held a marked lead, and in Brassey's 
Naval Annual for 1914 the submarine forces of the 
chief naval Powers were given as follows : — Great 
Britain, 76 vessels built and 20 ordered ; France, 70 and 
23 ; the U.S.A., 29 and 31 ; Germany, 27 and 12. The 
technical progress of the four services was probably 
more equal than their merely numerical strength ; 
but it was not altogether equal, as may be seen by a 
brief comparison of the development of the British 
and German submarine types between 1904 and 1914. 
The eight British A-boats of 1904 had a displacement 

. 180 tons on surface ., n TTn , _ nA . . 

of -^t^tt i t 5 the German Ul of 1904-6 

207 tons submerged 

was slightly larger (^sk) but in every other respect 

.«..,, , 250 on surface 

inferior — its horse-power was only — — — , =- as 

x 100 submerged, 

against y§§, its surface speed only 10 knots against 11*5, 

and it was fitted with only a single torpedo-tube instead 

of the A-boat's two. This last deficiency was remedied 

in 1906-8, but the German displacement did not rise 

above Jy§ nor the horse-power above f$% f while the 

British advanced to £{$ and J ^ L . By 1913 the 

Germans were building boats of ^|§ displacement and 

Voo horse-power, but the British were still ahead with 

fxo a nd -Vo^ a ^d had also a superiority in speed of 

Y§ knots to ■ 2 ^. The last German boats of which any 

details have been published are those of 1913-14, 

with a displacement of about 800 tons on the surface 

and a maximum speed of -^ knots. The British 

F-boats of the same date are in every way superior 

to these, with a displacement of f^o, a speed of f-§ 



30 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

knots, and an armament of six torpedo-tubes against 
the German four. The comparison cannot be carried, 
in figures, beyond the date of the outbreak of war, 
but it is well known among the allies of Great Britain 
that the superiority has been amply maintained, and, 
in certain important respects, materially increased. 

The four years of conflict have, however, afforded 
an opportunity for a further, and even more important, 
comparison. The problems of submarine war are not 
all material problems : moral qualities are needed to 
secure the efficient working of machinery, the handling 
of the ship under conditions of danger and difficulty 
hitherto unknown in war, and the conduct of a campaign 
with new legal and moral aspects of its own. In two. 
of these departments, those of efficiency and seaman- 
ship, the Germans have achieved a considerable show 
of success, though it could be, and in time will be, 
easily shown that the British naval service has been 
more successful still. But in the domain of policy and 
of international morality, the comparison becomes no 
longer a comparison but a contrast ; the new problems 
have been dealt with by the British in accordance with 
the old principles of law and humanity ; by the Germans 
they have not been solved at all, the knot has simply 
been cut by the cruel steel of the pirate and the 
murderer. The methods of the U-boat campaign have 
not only brought successive defeats upon Germany, 
they will in the end cripple her commerce for many 
years ; and, in addition to her material losses, she will 
suffer the bitter consequences of moral outlawry. 

Of the general efficiency of the German submarines 
it is too soon to speak, but it may be readily admitted 
that they have done well. We know, of course, many 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 31 

cases of failure — cases in which boats have been lost 
by defects in their engines, by running aground through 
mishandling in shoal waters, or by inability to free them- 
selves from British nets. On the other hand, the German 
patrol has been kept up with a degree of continuity 
which, when we remember the dislocation caused by 
their severe losses, is, at least, a proof of determination. 
But the British submarine service has to its credit a 
record of work which, so far as can be judged from the 
evidence available, is not only better but has been 
performed under more difficult and dangerous circum- 
stances. In the North Sea patrolling has been carried 
out regularly, in spite of minefields and of possible 
danger from the British squadrons, which must, of 
course, be avoided as carefully as if they were enemies. 
The German High Seas Fleet has been, for the most 
part, in hiding, but on the rare and brief occasions 
when their ships have ventured on one of their furtive 
raids British submarines have done their part, and the 
only two German Dreadnoughts which have risked them- 
selves outside Kiel since their Jutland flight were both 
torpedoed on the same day. Better opportunities, 
as we shall see later, were found in the Baltic, where 
British submarines, in spite of ^German and Swedish 
nets, ice-fields, and the great distance of bases, succeeded 
in establishing a complete panic, by torpedoing a number 
of German war vessels and the cargo ships which they 
were intended to safeguard. 

But it was in the Gallipoli campaign that the con- 
ditions were most trying and most novel. The British 
submarines detailed for the attack in Turkish waters 
had to begin by navigating the Dardanelles against 
a very rapid current, setting strongly into a succession 



32 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMAMNE 

of bays. They had to pass searchlights, mines, torpedo- 
tubes, nets and guard-boats ; and in the Sea of Marmora 
they were awaited by a swarm of cruisers, destroyers, 
and patrol-boats of all kinds. Yet, from the very first, 
they were successful in defeating all these. Boat after 
boat went up without a failure, and maintained herself 
for weeks at a time without a base, returning with an 
astonishing record of losses inflicted on the enemy. 
These records will be given more fully in a later chapter ; 
but that of E. 14, Lieut.-Commander Courtney Boyle, 
may be quoted here as an example, because it is no 
exceptional instance but merely the earliest of a number, 
and set a standard which was well maintained by 
those who followed. The passage of the narrows was 
made through the Turkish mine-field, and its difficulty 
may be judged by the fact that E. 14, during the first 
64 hours of the voyage, was diving for 44 hours and 50 
minutes. After she began her patrol work, there was 
more than one day on which she was under fire the whole 
day, except when she dived from time to time. The 
difficulty of using her torpedoes was extreme ; but she 
succeeded in hitting and sinking two transports, one 
of which was 1,500 yards distant and escorted by 
three destroyers. Finally when, after twenty- two days' 
patrolling, she began her return voyage, she was 
shepherded by a Turkish gunboat, a torpedo-boat, and 
a tug, one each side of her and one astern, and all 
hoping to catch her in the net ; but by deep and skilful 
diving she escaped them, and cleared the net and the 
mine-field at a speed of 7 knots. 

Her second patrol extended over twenty-three days. 
This time the tide was stronger, and the weather less 
favourable. The total number of steamers, grain dhows 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 33 

and provision ships, sunk on this patrol, amounted 
to no less than ten, and the return voyage was success- 
fully accomplished, the boat tearing clean through an 
obstruction off Bokali Kalessi. 

The third patrol was again twenty-two days. An 
hour after starting, E. 14 had her foremost hydroplane 
fouled by an obstruction which jammed it for the 
moment, and threw the ship eight points off her course. 
After a quick scrape she got clear, but found afterwards 
that her guard wire was nearly cut through.- On this 
trip the wireless apparatus was for a time out of order, 
but was successfully repaired ; eight good ships were 
burnt or sunk, one of them being a supply ship of 
5,000 tons. The return voyage was the most eventful 
of all. E. 14 came full against the net at Nagara, 
which had apparent been extendedly since she went up. 
The boat was brought up from 80 feet to 45 feet in three 
seconds, but broke away uninjured, with her bow and 
periscope standards scraped and scored. 

The efficiency of the boat and her crew were beyond 
praise. Since leaving England E. 14 had run over 
12,000 miles and had spent nearly seventy days at 
close quarters with the enemy in the Sea of Marmora ; 
she had never been in a dockyard or out of running 
order ; she had had no engine defects except such as 
were immediately put right by her own engine-room 
staff. Yet she made no claim to be better than her 
consorts. Nor did she make any boast of her humane 
treatment of captured enemies ; she merely followed 
the tradition of the British Navy in this matter, and 
the principles of law as accepted by all civilised nations. 
The commander of a submarine, whether British or 
German, has to contend with certain difficulties which 



34 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

did not trouble the cruiser captain of former wars. He 
cannot spare, from his small ship's company, a prize 
crew to take a captured vessel into port ; he cannot, 
except in very rare cases, hope to take her in himself ; 
and, again, if he is to sink her, he cannot find room 
in his narrow boat for more than one or two prisoners. 
What he can do is to see that non-combatants and 
neutrals, at least, shall be exposed as little as possible 
to danger or suffering ; he can give them boats and 
supplies and every opportunity of reaching land in 
safety. No one needs to be told how the Germans, 
either of their own native cruelty or by the orders of 
a brutal and immoral Higher Command, have in such 
circumstances chosen to deal with their helpless fellow- 
men, and even with women and children, and with the 
wounded and those attending them. But it may be 
well to put in evidence some of the brief notes in which 
a typical British submarine commander has recorded 
as a matter of course his own method on similar occa- 
sions. ' May 8. Allowed two steamers full of refugees 
to proceed.' ' June 20. Boarded and sank 3 sailing 
dhows ; towed crew inshore and gave them some 
biscuit, beef, and rum and water, as they were rather 
wet.' ' June 22. Let go passenger ship. 23. Burnt 
two-master and started to tow crew in their boat, but 
had to dive. Stopped 2 dhows : crews looked so 
miserable that I only sank one and let the other go. 
24. Blew up 2 large dhows ; saw 2 heads in the water 
near another ship ; turned and took them up ex- 
hausted, gave them food and drink and put them on 
board their own ship.' ' July 30. Burnt sailing vessel 
with no boat and spent remainder of afternoon trying 
to find a craft to get rid of her crew into. Found small 



EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE 85 

sailing boat and got rid of them.' ' August 3. Burnt 
large dhow. Unfortunately, 9 on board, including 2 
very old men, and their boat was small, so I had to 
take them on board and proceed with them close to 
the shore — got rid of them at 9.30 p.m.' 

As for the hospital ships, there were numbers of 
them coming and going ; but, empty or full, it is in- 
conceivable that the British Navy should make war 
upon hospital ships. Victory it will desire, but not by 
villainy ; defeat it will avoid strenuously, but not by 
the destruction of the first law of human life. The 
result is none the less certain : in the history of sub- 
marine war, as in that of all naval war, it will inevitably 
be seen that piracy and murder are not the methods of 
the strong. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 

The feelings of the average landsman, when he sets 
foot for the first time in a submarine, are a strong 
mixture of curiosity and apprehension. The curiosity 
is uppermost — the experience before you is much more 
novel than, for example, that of a first trip in an aero- 
plane. From a mountain or tower, a great wheel or a 
balloon, you have seen the bird's-eye view of the earth 
and felt the sensation of hanging over the aerial abyss. 
But even the fascinating pages of Jules Verne have not 
told you all that you will feel in a submarine, and 
nothing but physical experience can do so. You are 
eager to see the working of new mechanical devices 
in a wholly strange element, and to learn the use of a 
new weapon in a wholly strange kind of war. But with 
this eagerness, there is an underlying sense of uneasiness, 
a feeling that you are putting yourself into a position 
where you are as helpless as a mouse in a patent trap. 
The cause of this is not fear of war risks, for it is equally 
strong in harbour, or in time of peace. It is probably 
connected with the common dread of suffocation, which 
may be an instinct inherited from ages of primitive 
life in the open. They will tell you, in the submarine 
service, that it is a mere habit of mind and very soon 
forgotten. There is even a story of an officer who, on 

36 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 37 

coming ashore from a year's work in an E-boat, refused 
to travel in the Tube railway, because it looked so 
dangerous. He preferred the risks he was used to, and 
so do most of us. 

You stand, then, at the foot of the narrow iron ladder 
down which you have come from the upper air, you 
gag your inherited instinct, and let your curiosity loose. 
Before the boat dives, there is time for a good deal to 
be taken in. The interior seems large beyond expecta- 
tion. This is partly an illusion, produced by the vista 
of the compartments, fore and aft of the central control 
where you are standing. The bulkhead doors being all 
open at this moment, you can see into the engine and 
motor rooms towards the stern, and forward through 
the battery compartment to the bow torpedo-tubes. 
The number of men seems large too, and they are all 
busy ; but you note that every part of them is more 
active than their feet — there is very little coming and 
going. In the control, close to you, are thfe captain, 
a lieutenant, a steersman, and seven or eight other 
men for working the ballast tanks, air valves, elec- 
trical apparatus, and hydroplanes. The last two of 
them have just come down from deck — the hatches 
are closed — the engines have already been running 
for some minutes, though the order escaped your 
observation. 

You are invited 'to see her dive.' You go up to 
the forward conning-tower scuttle and flatten your face 
against the thick glass. An order is given. You hear 
the hissing of air, as the ballast tanks are filled. You 
expect to see the forward part of the boat dip down into 
the water in which she is heaving. Instead of that, it is 
apparently the sea which lifts itself up, moves along 



38 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the deck, and seems to be coming in a huge slow 
wave over your scuttle. The light of day gives place 
to a green twilight, full of small bubbles. Mentally 
you feel a slight chill ; but physically, a warm and sticky 
sensation. As there is nothing more to be seen out of 
window, you return to your instructor. He explains 
to you that the ship is now running on her motors, and 
that her speed is therefore low— not nearly enough 
to overhaul a vessel or convoy of any power. On the 
surface, with her other engines, she could far more than 
double the pace ; and even with the motors, she could do 
a spurt for a short time — but spurts are very expensive ; 
for they use up the battery power with ruinous rapidity, 
and then a return to the surface will be necessary, 
whether safe or not. 

At this point it may strike you suddenly that you 
are now under water — you begin to wonder how deep 
you are, and why you have not perceived any change 
in the boat's position. The answer is that the depth 
marked on the gauges is only twenty feet, and the angle 
of descent was therefore very slight — much too slight 
to be perceptible in the short length of a single compart 
ment. The depth of twenty feet is now being main- 
tained with surprising steadiness ; the explanation is 
that two entirely separate forces are at work. First, 
there are the horizontal rudders or hydroplanes, fitted 
outside the vessel both fore and aft, by which she can 
be forced down, provided she has sufficient way on, 
in much the same fashion as an ordinary vertical rudder 
forces a ship to one side or the other. But this is only 
the diving apparatus ; to keep her down, there is her 
water ballast — the water which was taken into her main 
ballast tanks, when the order to submerge was given. 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 39 

These tanks contain a sufficient weight of water to 
counteract the normal buoyancy of the boat, by which 
she would naturally float upon the surface. When 
they are emptied, she will neither sink nor rise of her 
own motion — she will lie or run at whatever depth she 
is placed, by her hydroplanes or otherwise. 

These, you will have noticed, were called the 6 main ' 
ballast tanks — there would seem then to be others. 
There are, and several kinds of them. First, there is 
an auxiliary ballast tank, which has a peculiar use of 
its own. A submarine must be able to float or submerge 
in fresh water as well as at sea ; for her base or harbour 
will often be in the mouth of a river, or she may have 
to navigate a river, a canal, or a lake. It is a point 
that would not probably have occurred to you, but the 
difference between the density of fresh and salt water is 
sufficiently great to make a real difficulty here. Every- 
one knows that it is less easy to float in fresh water, 
and less easy to sink in salt. For practical purposes, 
a submerged boat is less buoyant in fresh water by 
26 tons in 1000, and vice versa; so that when a sub- 
marine of 1000 tons leaves a river for the sea, she must 
take an extra 26 tons of ballast to keep her down, and 
when she comes home again she must get rid of 26 tons, 
or she will sink so much deeper in the fresh water. 
For this purpose she has a special tank of the right 
size, proportioned to her tonnage ; and it is placed in 
the middle of the ship, in order that it may not interfere 
with her trim when it is filled or emptied. 

That last remark will put you in mind that, in any 
kind of navigation, the trim of the boat is a delicate 
and important matter. Even in very large and heavy 
ships you may be able, by shifting guns or cargo, to 



40 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

slip off a shoal, or right a leaking vessel after a collision. 
In a tickle boat like a submarine, it is necessary to have 
some means of trimming the vessel, fore or aft, at any 
moment, and especially when about to dive, or when 
caught by some under-water obstruction. Tanks are 
therefore fitted for this purpose at each end of the boat. 
They are comparatively small, because the effect required 
is in ordinary circumstances very limited, and in a 
desperate emergency they may need to be supplemented 
by rushing the crew fore or aft, as living ballast. An 
example of this will be found in a later chapter. 

You may now feel that you have heard enough of 
tanks ; but your instructor will insist on showing you 
a whole additional series. He will make a point of 
your recognising that a submarine, when submerged, 
is in reality hanging in the water as a balloon hangs in 
the air, and for every loss of weight she must be in- 
stantaneously compensated, or she will begin to rise. 
What loss of weight can she suffer while actually under 
water ? It is not perhaps very hard to guess. There is, 
first of all, the consumption of oil by the engines ; 
secondly, the consumption of food and fresh water by 
the crew ; and thirdly, the departure from time to time of 
torpedoes. Also, when on the surface, there may be gun 
ammunition fired away, or other things heaved overboard, 
and allowance must be made for this when the boat 
goes down again. The modern submarine is prepared to 
keep her balance under all such circumstances. She 
has compensating tanks, and they are placed as near 
as possible to the oil-tank, fresh-water tank, or tor- 
pedo-tube, for whose diminished weight they are to 
compensate. 

You are probably more interested in the torpedo- 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 41 

tubes than in the oil-tanks. It is time then to go for- 
ward. You pass through the battery compartment, 
where the officers' quarters are, and are shown (under 
the floor) the accumulators, ranged like the honey 
sections in the frames of a beehive, and very carefully 
covered over with flexible waterproof covering as well 
as with close-jointed planking. What would happen 
if water did find its way down to the batteries ? An 
instant discharge of chlorine gas, blinding and suffo- 
cating. What would you do then ? Come to the 
surface at all costs — and lucky if you are in time ! The 
Germans know all about that — and not long ago one 
of our own boats was only saved by the good goal-keeping 
of a lieutenant, who caught up a lid of some sort, and 
stood by the leak, neatly fending off the water spurt 
from the door of the battery compartment. 

Now you are in the forward torpedo compartment, 
and there are the tubes. I need not say anything 
about their size or number — you will realise at a glance 
that when a couple are loosed off at once, a good deal 
of weight goes out of the ship. The ordinary 18-inch 
fish is 17 feet long, and takes some handling. The 
explosive alone in her war-head weighs as much as 
a big man, say 12| stone, and a 21 -inch fish carries 
twice as much as that, packed in some four feet of her 
length. Behind that comes the air chamber — another 
ten feet — with the compressed air to drive the engine, 
which is in her stern. The air is stored at a pressure 
of over 2000 lbs. to the square inch ; so the steel walls 
of the chamber must be thick, and this makes another 
heavy item. Lastly, there is the engine -box with its 
four-cylinder engine, two propellers, gyroscope and 
steering gear. Altogether, an 18-inch fish will weigh 



42 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

nearly three-quarters of a ton, and a 21 -inch over 2000 
lbs., so that the amount of compensation needed when 
you fire, is considerable. 

To see how it is done, we will imagine ourselves firing 
this starboard tube. The torpedo is got ready, and 
special care is taken to make sure that the firing-pin 
in her nose is not forgotten. Cases have been known 
in which a ship has been hit full by a torpedo which 
did not explode- — just as a good many Zeppelin bombs 
were found in London, after the early raids, with the 
detonating pin not drawn. The fish is now ready to 
come alive, and is slid into the tube. The door is shut 
behind it, and the water-tight outer door, at the other 
end of the tube, is now ready to be opened by powerful 
levers. But the immediate result of this opening would 
be an inrush of sea-water which would weigh the boat's 
head down ; for though the fish's belly fits the tube 
pretty closely, there is a good deal of empty space where 
it tapers towards the nose and tail. Here comes in 
the tank system. When the tube is loaded, this empty 
space is rilled by water from within the ship, so that no 
change of weight occurs when you open the outer door. 
But when the firing-button has been pushed, and the 
torpedo has been shot out by an air-charge behind it 
there is no possibility of preventing the whole tube 
from rilling with water, and this water must be got rid 
of before the tube can be reloaded. To do this, you 
first close the outer door again ; then you have to 
deal with the tubeful of water. A good part of it 
is what the ship herself supplied to fill the space 
round the torpedo ; and this must be pumped back 
into the special tank it came from. The remainder is 
the sea-water which rushed in, to take the place left 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 43 

empty by the departing torpedo : and this must be 
pumped into another special tank to prevent the ship 
feeling the loss of the torpedo's weight. When you 
get a fresh supply of torpedoes, these special com- 
pensating tanks (which are really a kind of dummy 
torpedoes) will be emptied out, one for each new torpedo. 
Meantime, you have now got the tube empty, and can 
open the inner door and reload. 

But what of the torpedo which has been fired ? It 
is travelling towards its mark at a speed of between 
thirty-five and forty knots, if we suppose the range to be 
an ordinary one, under 1000 yards, and the torpedo to 
have been 'run hot, 5 i.e. driven by hot air instead of 
cold. The compressed air is heated mechanically inside 
the torpedo, in the act of passing from the air chamber 
to the machinery, and this increases both the speed and 
range. But it is not always convenient or possible to 
start the heating apparatus, and even when ' run cold ' 
the fish will do thirty knots. This speed is amazing, 
but it is one of the least wonderful of the torpedo's 
qualities. The steering of the machine is a double 
miracle. One device makes it take, after the first plunge, 
exactly the depth you desire, and another — a gyroscope 
fitted inside the rudder gear — keeps it straight on its 
course ; or makes it, if you wish, turn in a circle and 
strike its prey, boomerang fashion. The head of the 
fish can also be fitted with cutters which will cut through 
any torpedo-netting that a ship can afford to carry. 
The only thing that no ingenuity can accomplish is 
to make a torpedo invisible during its run. The com- 
pressed air, when it has passed through the engine, must 
escape, and it comes to the surface in a continuous 
boiling line of bubbles. This is visible at a considerable 



U SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

distance ; and though, when the track is sighted by the 
look-out, the torpedo itself is of course always well ahead 
of the nearest spot where the bubbles are seen rising, 
it is surprising how often ships do succeed in avoiding 
a direct shot. A prompt cry from the look-out, a 
steersman ready to put his helm over instantly, and the 
torpedo goes bubbling past, a few feet ahead or astern, 
or comes in on a tangent and runs harmlessly along 
the ship's side without exploding. Then away it goes 
across the open sea, until the compressed air is ex- 
hausted, the engine stops, and the mechanical sinker 
sends it to the ocean bed, which must be fairly strewn 
with dead torpedoes by this time ; for^as we know, to 
our advantage, the proportion of misses to hits is very 
large in the U-boat's record. 

Now that you have seen the weapon — and can at 
any rate imagine the handling of it — you are naturally 
keen to sight the game, and realise the conditions of 
a good shot. You go back to the central compartment, 
where the Commander is ready to show you a ship 
through the periscope. Not, of course, an enemy ship — 
in this war, if you want a shot at an enemy ship, you 
must go into his own waters — into the Bight or the 
Baltic — to find him ; and even there he is probably tucked 
up very tight in his berth, with chained barges and 
heavy nets all round him, and mines all up the approach. 
But there are plenty of our own ships out every day — 
sweeping, cruising, trading ; and transporting men, food, 
mails, and munitions. And what you see will help you 
to understand why the Germans have spent so many 
torpedoes, and sunk so comparatively small a proportion 
of our enormous tonnage. 

The boat is now less deep in the water ; the gauges 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 45 

mark 15 feet, and you are told that the top of the peri- 
scope is therefore some two feet above the surface. 
The shaft of it is round, like a large vertical piston ; 
but at the bottom it ends in a flattened box, with a hand- 
grip projecting on each side. You take hold of the 
grips and look into the box. Nothing is visible but an 
expanse of water, with a coast-line of low hills beyond it 
— all in miniature. The Commander presses the back of 
your left hand on the grip, and you move round slowly 
as the periscope revolves. The coast -line goes out of 
the picture, the sea lies open to the horizon, and upon 
it appears a line of odd-looking spots. They are moving ; 
for the nearest one, which was narrow a moment ago, 
is now three or four times as broad, and is in a different 
place in the line. 

The line, you are told, is not a line at all, but a 
convoy, in fairly regular formation. The nearest spot 
is a destroyer, zigzagging on the flank ; the others are 
ships which have been so effectively ' dazzled ' that 
their shapes are unrecognisable. You carry on, in hope 
of something nearer, and suddenly a much larger object 
comes into the field of vision. A ship, of course, though 
it does not look like any ship you have ever seen ; and 
you are asked to guess its distance and direction. You 
are bewildered at first ; for as you were moving the lens 
rapidly to starboard, the vessel came in rapidly to 
port, and as her dazzle-paint makes her stern indis- 
tinguishable from her bows, you continue to think she 
is steaming in that direction. After a more careful 
observation, this mistake is corrected. She is crossing 
us from port to starboard. But at what angle ? This 
is vitally important, for the possibility of getting in a 
successful shot would depend entirely upon the answer. 



46 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

We are ourselves heading about due north : she is 
crossing to the east : if her course is south of east, she 
is coming nearer to us, and our torpedo would strike 
her before the beam — the most favourable chance. 
If, on the contrary, her course is north of east she is 
going away, and the torpedo would have a poor chance 
of hitting her abaft the beam. In fact, it would not be 
worth while to risk losing so costly a shot. A torpedo 
at present prices is worth not far short of £2000, and 
we only carry two for each tube. 

You look long and hard at this dazzle-ship. She 
doesn't give you any sensation of being dazzled ; but 
she is, in some queer way, all wrong — her proportions are 
wrong, she is somehow not herself, not what she ought 
to be. If you fix your attention on one end of her, she 
seems to point one way — if you look away at her other 
end, she is doing something different. You can't see 
the height of her funnels clearly, or their relative posi- 
tion. But, with care, you decide that she is coming 
about south-east and will be therefore your bird in 
two minutes' time. The Commander is interested. 
He takes a look himself, laughs, and puts you back at 
the eye -piece. You hold on in hope that he may, after 
all, be wrong ; but the bird ends by getting well away 
to the north-east. Your error covered just ninety 
degrees, and the camouflage had beaten you completely. 
You begin to think that the ingenuity at command of 
the nation has been underestimated. But this ship 
is nothing of a dazzle, the Commander tells you — he 
can show you one whose cut -water seems always to be 
moving at a right angle to her stern ! 

He adds that he knew all about that cruiser, and 
she knew all about him. Otherwise he would not have 




Does not look like any ship you have ever seen. 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 49 

shown even his periscope ; and if he had, she would 
have had a shell into him by now, and a depth-charge 
to follow. A depth-charge is perhaps the mosc formid- 
able weapon against which the submarine has to be on 
guard. It is a bomb, with a detonator which can be 
set to explode when it reaches any given depth. A 
small one would need to hit the mark full, or be very 
close to it, in order to get a satisfactory result ; but the 
newer and larger ones will seriously damage a submarine 
within an area of forty yards. The charge is either 
dropped over the stern of the pursuing vessel, when she 
is thought to be just over or just ahead of the enemy ; 
or it is fired out of a small and handy short-range howitzer 
— a kind of lob-shot, a number of which can be made 
by several patrol boats acting together, so as to cover a 
larger area with much less risk of embarrassing each 
other. Even if the submarine is not destroyed outright, 
the chances are in such a case that she will be so damaged 
as to be forced to the surface or to the bottom, and then 
the end is certain. A bad leak would bring her up — an 
injury to her tanks or rudders might drive her down. 

You are uncomfortably reminded once more of 
that inherited dislike of death by suffocation. If a 
submarine cannot rise to the surface, you ask, is there 
no possible means of escape ? The answer is that it 
may be possible, with great difficulty, to get out of the 
boat ; but there is very little chance that you would 
survive. The lungs are not fitted to bear so great and 
sudden a change of pressure as that felt in passing from 
the boat to the water, and from the deep water-to the 
surface. You are perhaps surprised ; but the pressure 
of sea-water at 160 feet is equal to five atmospheres, 
or about 75 lbs. to the square inch. To pass safely 



50 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

through this to the ordinary surface atmosphere would 
need a long and gradual process, and not a sudden 
rise of a few seconds. A very brave attempt was made 
on one occasion, when a British submarine had gone 
to the bottom during her trials, and could not be got 
up by any effort of her crew. The agony of the situation 
was intensified by the fact that help was close at hand, if 
only the alarm could be given, and the whereabouts of the 
submarine communicated to the rescuers. The officers 
of the sunken boat were, of course, perfectly aware 
of the danger from sudden change of pressure ; but one 
of them volunteered to go to the surface, alive or dead, 
and carry a message on the chance of attracting some 
ship's attention. To lessen the risk as far as possible, 
it was arranged that he should go up into the conning - 
tower, and that the hatch should then be closed beneath 
him and the water gradually admitted. As it flowed 
slowly in, and mounted round him, the air in the top 
of the conning -tower would diminish in extent but 
increase in pressure. When it reached his neck, the 
internal pressure would be nearly equal to the external. 
He would be able to open the top, possibly to make his 
escape, and conceivably to reach the surface without his 
lungs being fatally injured. If he failed, he would at 
any rate have given his life for the chance of saving his 
comrades. 

The Commander accompanied him into the conning- 
tower, meaning, it is said, to return into the ship himself 
when he had seen to all the arrangements. But when 
the water was admitted, the two of them were shot out 
together, and as it happened it was the volunteer who 
was killed, by striking against the superstructure, 
while the Commander came up alive. In no long time 



THE SUBMARINE OF TO-DAY 51 

— though it must have seemed unendurably long to 
those below, waiting in complete uncertainty — the 
rescuers were informed, found the submarine, and got 
a hawser under her stern. They raised her high 
enough out of the water, vertically, to open a hatch 
and save the crew. Then the hawser gave, and the 
boat went down again. 

That story is not unlikely to haunt you all the way 
home, and for a long time afterwards. It may even 
make a difference to your whole feeling about the war 
under water, as waged by our own Service. The 
submarine is not merely an incredibly clever box of 
mechanical toys, nor is it only the fit weapon of a cruel 
and ruthless enemy ; it is also a true part of the Navy 
without fear and without reproach, whose men play 
the great game for each other and for their country, 
and play it more greatly than we know. The tune of 
their service is a kind of undertone ; but it is in the 
heroic key, and cannot fall below it. 



CHAPTER IV 

A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 

Our submarine now returns to the surface* She is 
proceeding on patrol, and her commander, as he bids 
us good-bye, recommends us to put into the port from 
which he has just come, and see what a submarine base 
is like. We take his advice, and return to our trawler. 
Her head is turned westward and signals are made and 
answered. The skipper informs us that we are about 
to pass through a mine-field where the mines are as 
thick as herring-roe. It is some consolation to hear 
that ' The Sweep ' has already done its daily morning 
work, and that the channel is presumably clear. 

The East Coast of England, from Tynemouth to 
Thames mouth, is pierced with some ten or a dozen 
estuaries, all more or less suitable for flotilla bases. 
It is unnecessary to say how many of these are used by 
our submarines, or which of them it is that we are about 
to enter. But a short description can do no harm, 
because one of these bases is very like another, and 
all are absolutely impervious to enemy craft. Even 
if they could navigate the mine-field, so thickly strewn 
with both our mines and their own, and so constantly 
and thoughtfully rearranged, they would not find it 
possible to slip, as we are doing, past the elaborate 
boom at the harbour mouth, or to escape being sunk 

52 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 53 

by the guns which dominate it, and the seaplanes which 
are constantly passing over it. 

And now that we are inside, it looks an even more 
dangerous place for an intruder — a perfect hornets' nest. 
Close to us on the left lies a small pier, with buildings 
on a hill behind it — the Commodore's house and offices, 
seamen's training-school, and gymnasium. At the 
pier-head are two or three picket-boats; and a little 
further on, a light cruiser with her observation balloon 
mounted. The vast sheds beyond are the hangars of 
the Air Service. They are painted in a kind of Futurist 
style, which gives them a queer look from below, but 
makes them, when seen from a thousand feet up, either 
invisible or like a landscape of high roads, cornfields, 
hay-stacks and groups of trees — objects quite uninviting 
to any stray air-raider. But their best protection is 
the efficiency of the machines and men inside them. 

Over on the opposite side of the river stretches a 
long quay. The background of it is a naval railway 
station ; the ships lying in front of it are partly supply 
ships, partly merchant vessels brought in under convoy, 
and two of them are depot ships, moored permanently 
there, and used as headquarters for the Submarine, 
Destroyer, and other services. Out in the centre of the 
harbour lies a still larger depot ship, the floating head- 
quarters of the Admiral who is Commodore of the port ; 
and behind her, in two long lines, stretching away 
upstream into the far distance, lies an apparently 
inexhaustible force of light cruisers, destroyers, and 
destroyer-leaders, with here and there a submarine — 
one is slung aloft in a dry-dock for overhauling. A side 
creek to the left is crowded with trawlers and drifters, 
whose men are now ashore ' between sweeps.' At this 



54 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

hour of the day the place is at its fullest, for the daily 
1 Beef Trip,' or food convoy, has just come in, and the 
dozen destroyers which escorted it are all lying at 
their moorings, on both sides of the main stream line. 
There they will be till to-night, when at 7 o'clock to 
the second they will all slip away again into the twilight 
like thin grey ghostly dogs, shepherding another flock 
of very substantial sheep. 

The trawler puts us aboard the depot ship; but 
the Admiral is not there. A picket-boat takes us 
over to his pier, and we find him in his chart-room, 
surrounded by maps marked with spots and figures 
in different colours, quite unintelligible except to those 
who have the key, and even to them no subject for 
conversation at large. But the Admiral is a good talker, 
his mind is an encyclopaedia of submarine war and the 
working of a naval base, and he is amazingly quick 
in separating the facts which interest you, and yet are 
fit for repetition outside, from those which you must 
forget as soon as you have heard them. He begins by 
explaining the daily routine of the port — the mine- 
sweeping, which is done regularly twice a day, but at 
what times the enemy can only guess, and the mine- 
laying, which is a game of brain against brain, each 
side trying to see through the other's devices and catch 
him with their own. An elementary, example would 
be the obvious dodge of moving the enemy's mine a 
short distance, instead of removing it altogether — so 
that when next he comes that way, he shall run into 
it unexpectedly, and perish by his own trap. But this, 
as I have described it, is too simple a device to be 
successful, and the ingenuity of our mine-layers has 
improved upon it by a dozen skilful variations. Much 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 55 

can be done by studying carefully the habits of the 
German mind. One officer, who is specially skilled in 
this matter, has the credit of being able to make a 
U.C.-boat lay her eggs just where he pleases, and of 
knowing exactly when it will be time to go and collect 
them. 

Our own mine-laying and coastal patrol would be 
more exciting if the possible successes were not limited 
to an occasional submarine. It is a little dull to be 
always laying traps for a flotilla that never comes. 
The work of our coastal submarines is therefore mono- 
tonous ; but it is none the less invaluable. Besides 
making sure, it trains a continual succession of crews 
for oversea work, and gives experience to young com- 
manders. The number of boats increases every year, 
and the flow of volunteer entries keeps pace with it. 
The standard demanded is very high, and it is fully 
maintained. The prize of efficiency is immediate entry 
into the hardships and dangers of the oversea patrol. 

There is no doubt that the hardships are more 
trying to our men than the dangers. The oversea 
patrol is kept up through the winter. The weather 
off the enemy's coast is often very severe, and boats 
have to be shut down for long periods. In summer, the 
work of diving patrols is almost equally arduous, owing 
to the longer hours of daylight. Boats must frequently 
be submerged for nineteen or twenty hours at a time ; and 
after the first twelve of these, the air, in spite of purifiers, 
becomes oppressive to breathe — not even the head of 
a match will burn. Then there are two special condi- 
tions tending towards depression. First, the positive 
results are few, ard form no measure of the work or 
the risks. Results are obtained, but never in proportion 



56 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

to the devotion and sanguine hopes of the Service. It 
is a baffling and trying experience to live for days with 
your eye glued to a periscope — the field of vision is 
contracted, and too close to the water. The psycho- 
logical effect of the strain would be bad in the case 
of any but highly trained and selected officers — as one 
of them has said, the sighting of a surface enemy is a 
relief seldom obtained. The Germans are fortunate 
in the daily, almost hourly, sighting of targets. But 
their officers, in consequence of continual heavy losses, 
are commonly sent to sea undertrained, and their re- 
sults are naturally poor in proportion to the torpedoes 
expended. 

The second of the two causes which would discourage 
any but the finest spirit, is the fact that an almost 
complete silence broods over the Submarine Seivice. 
Not only is the work done mostly in the deep-sea twi- 
light ; but, however arduous and creditable it may be, 
it is seldom recognised publicly. Rewards are given, 
but not openly. A commander may reappear for a day 
or two among his friends, wearing the ribbon of the 
D.S.O. or the V.C., or both, but little or nothing will 
be published of the actions by which he won them: It 
is not only that information must be kept from reach- 
ing the enemy — and naturally the German Admiralty 
is always anxious to know how their boats are lost — 
but there is also a settled custom in our Navy, a 
custom older than the Submarine Seivice, by which 
6 mention in despatches ' is confined to incidents during 
which one or both sides have been under fire, from gun 
or torpedo. Custom in the Navy is generally a sound 
rule ; but in this particular instance, the custom did 
not grow up to fit the case, and does not fit it, The 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 57 

Admiral does not say anything on this point ; but he 
tells us that the real danger a submarine commander 
has to face is not the gun or the torpedo. He may 
come off his patrol without having been shot at by 
either, and yet may be entitled to the credit of having 
been in action for days and nights on end. In fact, 
every minute that he is in enemy waters he is in danger 
from mines, and from a host of formidable pursuers — 
aeroplanes and Zeppelins with bombs, and fast anti- 
submarine craft with depth-charges and explosive sweeps. 
No doubt all ships are to some extent in danger from 
mines, but no other class of vessel is asked to run the 
gauntlet on the enemy's coast to anything like the 
same extent. If surface ships are sent, they are sent 
for a single operation, the ground is prepared for them 
as far as possible, the period of exposure is short, and 
when the work is done the force is withdrawn. But 
our submarines are, for days and weeks at a time, close 
to known mine-fields and in areas most likely to bold 
new or drifted mines. They are harassed by hunters 
to whom they can make no reply, and particularly by 
aircraft, which can detect them even at sixty feet 
below the surface. The areas in which they work 
are comparatively narrow, and so closely patrolled by 
small craft that it is seldom possible to come to the 
surface in daylight ; navigation, too, is very difficult, 
and the rapidly changing densities of the water off the 
enemy's coast make the trimming of the boat and the 
depth control a matter of constant anxiety. 

Yet not only are officers and men found in plenty 
to enter this service of twilight and silence, but the 
keenness they show for it is unfailing. The work itself 
is their one ambition, and their records are astounding. 



58 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Ask the Captain (S.) of tlis port. In two years he 
has organised 370 cruises, lasting in all 1680 days, and 
extending over a surface mileage of more than 200,000 
miles. There was only a single breakdown, and that 
ended in a triumph ; for the Commander got himself 
towed back by an enemy trawler, neatly captured for 
the purpose. Another — Commander Talbot — made 
twenty- one cruises ; Lieutenant C. Turner, nineteen ; 
Commanders Goodhart and Leir, seventeen each; 
Commander Benning and Lieut. C. Moncreiffe, sixteen. 
More wonderful still is the fact that the first two of 
these officers spent fifty-six and sixty-five days re- 
spectively in enemy waters, and the other four from 
thirty-six to forty-nine days each. The most interesting 
part of their adventures cannot yet be told ; but much 
may be guessed from an outline or two. Commander 
Leir,for instance, was repeatedly in action with Zeppelins, 
seaplanes, and anti-submarine craft, one of which he 
sank. He was present at the action in the Heligoland 
Bight in August 1914, and brought home some German 
prisoners. Commander Benning was also repeatedly 
in action. Once, after torpedoing an armed auxiliary 
cruiser, he was forced by enemy sweepers to dive into 
a German mine-field. There he had to stay, with 
batteries exhausted, till night gave him a chance of 
recharging. Another time he went down into a mine- 
field of his own will, to lie in wait for an armed auxiliary. 
He was there for three hours, but ambushed her success- 
fully in the end, close to the German coast. Lieut.- 
Commander Turner covered 20,000 miles to bis own 
score, and passed much of his time actually in the 
swept channels, with enemy patrols in sight the whole 
day. Sometimes he came up and fought them, sometimes 




' Towed back by an enemy trawler. 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 61 

they hunted him with depth-charges. For those who 
sleep in beds and travel in buses, it is an almost un- 
imaginable life. ' Yes,' says the Admiral, ' in this Ser- 
vice, officers need a two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage 
every hour they are at sea : and they have it.' 

The charts are put away. We move out, first to 
the gymnasium, where physical drill is going on, then 
towards the great air- sheds. As we approach the first 
of these, an officer meets us and hands a block to the 
Admiral with the morning report upon it. 

The Admiral's face lights up as he reads. ' A lucky 
chance— something to interest you.' The Beef Trip, 
it appears, which has just returned, was escorted as 
usual by two seaplanes, flying ahead of the convoy. 
The starboard one of these had sighted a submarine 
at 8.30 a.m. and swooped towards her instantly. She 
was nearly submerged when the seaplane passed over 
her, but the two big depth-charges which were dropped 
in a flash, fell right into her wash and close to the 
conning-tower, which disappeared in the explosion. 

An excellent bit of work ! But the face of the officer 
standing by shows a distinct cloud. ' What is it ? ' Well, 
the fact is that the pilot of the other seaplane, a mile 
and a half away to port, had an impression that the 
submarine was British. 

The pilot of the bomb-dropper is sent for and comes 
out at once — a fair-haired and very young lieutenant, 
with an air of perfectly undisturbed serenity. He 
is sure nothing is wrong — it is c only a muddle.' His 
companion pilot had certainly sighted and spoken a 
British submarine some quarter of an hour earlier ; 
but this was not the one. Also another boat, E. 134, 
was out on patrol in that precise direction, but she 



62 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

was not due in that spot till 11 o'clock, B.S.T., and it 
was highly improbable she would be there so much 
before her time. Besides, he knew the colour of a Hun 
conning-tower. Undoubtedly it was ' only a muddle.' 
The explanation sounds a good one, but it is a specula- 
tion, not a certainty ; and on further inquiry, it appears 
that nothing has since been heard of E. 134. The Admiral 
sends off the young pilot with a word of good cheer ; 
but when he has gone, he hands back the report with a 
serious look. The incident has become too interesting. 
It is no longer something to tell a visitor. We go into 
the sheds and spend the remainder of our time in viewing 
the huge Americas and Handley- Pages. 

The rest of the story comes after lunch, when we 
go to visit the Captain (S.) in his depot ship. He has 
heard all about our pilot, and our submarine too. E. 134 
lay all night in her billet, resting on the bottom at 
140 feet and listening with all her hydrophones. In the 
morning her watch was rewarded ; she heard, first, 
the morotonous low ticking of a German submarine's 
motors passing near her on the outward patrol — then 
at 8.30 the heavy dull boom of two explosions close 
together — then not a sound more ! Finally, at her 
appointed time, noting that the U-boat had never 
stirred again, she rose to the surface and came home 
in rear of the sweep. The muddle is cleared up, and 
in the best manner. 

We discuss the dead submarine and ask whether 
she would be, or would have been, more formidable 
when used against a convoy than against a single ship. 
The Captain (S.) who has already been torpedoed once 
himself, thinks there can be no doubt on this subject. 
6 A single ship is much more easily approached than a 




She was nearly submerged when the seaplane passed over her.' 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 65 

convoy — she has only one set of eyes on the look-out, 
from one position, and the enemy can stalk her without 
fear of being trodden on from other quarters. Convoys 
ought to escape nearly every time, and they do. 
Look at the record of this port — not one loss in two 
years.' This opinion is based on experience, but the 
matter looks different from the point of view of the 
convoy escort, whose responsibility weighs upon 
him every day afresh. This we discover when we 
pass on to visit a destroyer-leader, at a later hour 
in the evening. She is being got ready for the 
night's work and it is now just six, but her captain 
assures us that what remains of his time is entirely 
ours. He takes us down to his own room, an elegant 
and almost spacious apartment, very unlike anything to • 
be seen in a destroyer of the ordinary type ; and he, 
too, answers our question positively. ' Which is easiest 
— to hit a single ship or a convoy ? The question 
answers itself — a submarine ought to get at least one 
bird out of a covey every time ! She does not do it, 
perhaps ; but look at the trouble we take to prevent 
her. Think of all the work put in by the auxiliary 
patrol to keep the sea fairly clear to start with — armed 
yachts, trawlers, whalers, drifters, motor-launches, 
mine-sweepers, net-drifters and motor-boats, out day 
and night all round the whole coast of the U.K. That 
is their routine work ; and besides that they supply 
escorts to individual ships of special value and to ocean 
convoys, when they have arrived at their port of initial 
entry, and are to be taken on elsewhere. Then there 
are the various kinds of protective devices for the ships 
themselves — the dazzle-painting, the smoke-boxes on 
broads, and the smoke-boxes for floating behind you. 



66 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE] 

And since we are talking of these things, there is the 
work of the destroyers and trawlers on regular convoy.' 
This is, of course, the captain's own job, and we naturally 
bint a desire that he should pursue the subject. 

1 There is no difficulty about it — the Germans already 
know all that they can ever know of our convoy system 
— how it is organised in the form of group -sailings on 
definite routes, and worked, as far as possible, at night, 
with extra protection given by daylight and during 
moonlight hours — above all, how successful it is, and 
how, little by little, they have given up the chase of 
mercantile convoys for the attack of transports and 
single ships of great size and value. In one month, 
for instance, of the present year, 690 vessels were con- 
voyed from England to France, of which only three were 
attacked, and only two sunk, including one small sail- 
ing ship. More astonishing still, out of 693 convoyed 
from France to England in the same month not one 
was touched, or even attacked. Then there are the 
Dutch and Scandinavian lines.' 

We should like to know exactly how it is done, and 
especially what part the destroyers play in the game. 
Briefly, but very sharply, the picture is drawn for us. 
You see a fine August day, off the coast of Scotland, 
with white summer clouds over a rippling sea ; a 
compact convoy of eight ships sailing in two columns, 
with a ninth lagging on the left, three times her proper 
distance to the rear. Their speed is slow ; they are flanked 
on both sides, fore and aft, by armed trawlers, with one 
just ahead of the two columns, and they are covered by 
two fast destroyers. The first of these is ahead of the 
convoy, zigzagging continuously from side to side across 
the whole front. The second is zigzagging in another 



A BRITISH SUBMARINE BASE 67 

direction. Suddenly, from this second destroyer, a 
signal is seen to fly. Her look-out has spotted the wake 
of a periscope 1000 yards away on her starboard bow, 
moving to cut off the convoy, from the right column of 
which it is already not more than 1500 yards distant. 
A torpedo fired at this moment should cross the convoy 
formation exactly in the middle, and would have an 
excellent chance of sinking either of the centre ships 
in either column — it could hardly miss all four. But 
the destroyer has in a moment altered course 8 points 
to starboard, and is prolonging this zigzag directly 
towards the enemy at thirty-odd knots, with her forward 
guns blazing. The U-boat captain, no doubt, longs 
to take his shot into the brown ; but he has less than 
one minute in which to perform the more urgent duty 
of saving his own ship. Down he goes, with a depth- 
charge after him, and is not seen or heard of again 
in this story. The convoy calls up its lame duck and 
goes safely to its destination. 

' Yes,' says the Captain, * we get them through, and 
it all looks very simple ; but it's mostly a matter of 
ten seconds, and you can't grow fat on a daily margin 
of ten seconds.' 

' But the Admiral has something to say on your 
report ? ' 

6 The Admiral writes outside, " Good look-out and 
prompt action of Swallow probably averted a casualty 
to the convoy." He has to write that most days — 
he must be tired of writing it.' 

It is now two minutes to seven. As we drop into 
our picket-boat, the destroyer slips silently from her 
moorings and fades away down stream with, eleven other 
thin grey phantoms. 



CHAPTER V 

SUBMARINES AND WAR POLICY 

> Strategy,' says the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' ' has 
been curtly described as the art of concentrating an 
effective righting force at a given place at a given time, 
and tactics as the art of using it when there.' In less 
scientific language, you fight a battle by means of tactics, 
and a campaign by means of strategy. But when nations 
live, as we have all been living for many years past, 
in constant preparation for war, there must be fore- 
thought as to the means and methods to be employed, 
Each nation has broad general plans, ready for the 
moment when fighting is decided upon, and ships, guns, 
and armies are provided accordingly. This is what is 
meant by war policy ; and examples will come to 
mind at once. We live in a group of islands, with 
Dominions and other possessions overseas, and we have 
no desire to attack our continental neighbours. British 
war policy has therefore always been chiefly directed 
to the provision of an invincible navy for defending our 
shores and our commerce. The German Empire, on 
the other hand, is practically self-contained ; it lies 
on the Continent, with land powers for neighbours whom 
it has long hoped and intended to dominate. German 
war policy, therefore, concerned itself until quite 
recently with plans for aggression by land, and only 

63 



SUBMARINES AND WAR POLICY 69 

provided a powerful fleet when it became desirable to 
have a weapon in hand against England — not necessarily 
to fight us on equal terms, but, as they said themselves, 
to make us hesitate to take sides against them. 

In this way it came about that both countries had 
a great naval war policy, and watched each other 
carefully, building dreadnoughts against dreadnoughts, 
and cruisers against cruisers. We made great and 
successful efforts to keep the lead ; for sea power is a 
matter of life and death to us ; and the Germans were 
spending every mark they could spare, to get more and 
more nearly upon even terms. It is certain that the 
war policy of both Powers took account of the possible 
uses of submarine boats ; but the lines of thought 
which they followed were in some ways widely different, 
and they led, when war came, to unexpected develop- 
ments. Let us consider for a few moments what the 
British admirals on the one hand, and the German 
on the other, intended to do with their submarine forces, 
and what they actually did when the time for action 
came. 

British war policy was essentially non-aggressive. 
The Navy had but one possible antagonist of the first 
rank at sea, and that one we should never have fought 
with, except in a war of defence. Our submarines, 
therefore, had two obvious duties marked out for them. 
They would help in coast defence by making it dangerous 
for ships of war or transports to approach, and they 
might be used, if an opportunity arose, to attack a fleet 
in harbour, or a cruiser at sea. There was every proba- 
bility that any fleet of a Power at war with us would 
sooner or later have to spend a good deal of time in 
port, and it would certainly be well to have the means 



70 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

to attack it there. But, important as this function was, 
the idea of defence against invasion probably came first, 
and there is no doubt that an efficient submarine force 
is a very formidable addition to our flotilla for coast 
defence. Perhaps we thought, in those years of per- 
petual preparation, too much about the ' Invasion of 
England ' and too little about the duty of supporting 
our Allies on land ; and we had this much justification, 
that the Power from which we had every reason to 
expect an attack, was one directed by men of great 
energy and determination, certain to be relentless in 
pressing a war home upon us, even at the risk of a heavy 
loss. On the other hand, those who spoke and wrote 
most about invasion, nearly always failed to realise 
the immense difficulty of the undertaking; and they 
failed especially to see that, in modern times, the condi- 
tions had changed very considerably in favour of the 
defence. The initial problem of an invader by sea 
must always be the provision of transport sufficient 
for a large body of troops, with arms, equipment, and 
supplies of food and munitions. Even if we allow only 
two tons of shipping per man — the Japanese allowed 
six tons — the transport of 100,000 men would take 
twenty vessels of 10,000 tons each, and to collect these 
and load them would be a big operation,* difficult to 
conceal. In fact to conceal it, for a sufficiently long 
time, from a defence force well supplied with wireless 
telegraphy, fast scouts, and aerial observation, would 
now be a practical impossibility. But even if we sup- 
pose such an expedition to be able (under cover of 
fog, or by a complete surprise) to cross the North Sea 
unobserved, there remains the further difficulty of the 
landing, A place must be found where the invaders 



SUBMARINES AND WAR POLICY 71 

could obtain immediate control of supplies and com- 
munications ; there are but half a dozen such places 
at most upon our eastern coast-line, and these are all 
prepared for a strenuous defence by land. If we add 
to the land defence a mine-field and the presence of 
an unknown number of submarines, the attempt be- 
comes one involving the certainty of immense losses, 
and the extreme probability of failure. Even the 
German war-lords have not yet made up their minds 
to the risk of seeing eight or ten divisions drowned 
in an hour. 

Besides coast defence and harbour attack, there 
might possibly be a chance for our submarines in a 
fleet action. Of that, all that can be said now is that 
our Submarine Service is believed to have shown greater 
promptness and ingenuity in its preparations than the 
German Admiralty, and awaits the next naval engage- 
ment with eager anticipation. But already it has been 
found practicable to use our submarines for two very 
important kinds of work, to an extent which was cer- 
tainly quite unforeseen. One of these is the chase and 
destruction of enemy submarines — a kind of service 
which has been pronounced impossible, even in books 
written during the later stages of the War, but actual 
examples of which will be given in one of the chapters 
which describe our hunting methods. The other kind 
of work is the blockade of the enemy's shipping trade 
and supply service, to be described when we come to the 
account of our submarine campaigns in the Baltic and 
Dardanelles. 

If we turn now to German naval policy, we shall 
come at once upon an interesting point, which has not 
been generally understood. We have been told that 



72 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the German Admiralty, before the War, was completely 
deceived as to the value of the submarine. And Mr. 
Marley Hay has been often quoted as saying that, in 
several conversations in 1911, Admiral von Tirpitz 
8 expressed emphatically his opinion that he considered 
submarines to be in an experimental stage, of doubtful 
utility, and that the German Government was not at 
all convinced that they would form an essential or a 
conspicuous part of their future naval programme.' 
Mr. Hay shows clearly that this was not said with the 
object of misleading ; for he was urging Tirpitz to 
build, and the Admiral continued to refuse. When war 
broke out, the German Navy had only twenty-seven 
submarines built against seventy-six British and seventy 
Frencr boats, and she was only building twelve more, 
against the twenty and twenty-three on our side. 
This may have been partly due to a miscalculation 
of their efficiency ; but the main reason was probably 
that the directors of German war policy were (at that 
time) preparing for a war in which our Navy was to 
take no part. The account with England was to be 
settled at a later date. The immediate intention was 
to deal with France and Russia, and the assistance 
of the Austrian and Italian submarines in the Medi- 
terranean was of course reckoned upon. 

When war came these calculations were falsified. 
The German High Seas Fleet found itself unable to stand 
up to ours, and German war policy was forced to take 
a different direction. The U-boats' first allotted task 
was the legitimate one of reducing our margin of superi- 
ority in battle-ships and cruisers. While our Fleet was 
certain to keep the sea, and protect our long coast- 
line and huge merchant tonnage, the German High 



SUBMARINES AND WAR POLICY 73 

Seas Fleet must lie in the Kiel Canal, risking only 
furtive and futile rushes into the open. But if the U- 
boats could hit a sufficient number of our more active 
warships, they might bring the forces nearer to an 
equality, and perhaps establish a prestige for their 
own Service. How they failed in this attempt we 
shall see presently. 

When their failure in the game of attrition became 
evident, the U-boats were utilised in a different way. 
A submarine blockade of the British Isles was plainly 
threatened by Admiral von Tirpitz towards the end 
of 1914 ; and the official announcement of it was made 
on February 4, 1915. By this document it was declared 
that on and after February 18, every British or French 
merchant vessel found in the waters of the ' war region ' 
round these islands ' will be destroyed, without its 
always being possible to warn the crews or passengers 
of the dangers threatening.' Neutral ships, it was 
added, would not be attacked unless by mistake ; but 
they are warned not to take the risk. 

Those who know even a little of the history of our 
old wars will see at a glance that this is a new move in 
naval war policy, and one made by the Germans to 
get over certain difficulties which arise from the very 
nature of submarine boats, and which are especially 
embarrassing when the submarines belong to a navy 
decidedly inferior to its enemies at sea. The old and 
well-established rules of naval war laid down that you 
could only interfere with merchant shipping if it were 
engaged in carrying contraband of war. To ascertain 
whether the ship you had sighted was carrying contra- 
band or not, you had to board and search her. If 
innocent, you must let her proceed on her voyage. 



74 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

If apparently guilty, you took over her men or otherwise 
placed them in safety, put a prize crew on board and 
sent her home to a port of your own, to be tried legally 
by a properly constituted tribunal called a Prize Court. 
If this Court decided that she was, in fact, carrying 
contraband, she was your prize. If you were forced by 
stress of circumstances to destroy the prize, instead of 
sending her into port, you took every care to remove 
everyone on board before doing so ; and when you 
had not room for so many people, you released the 
prize rather than endanger or sacrifice the lives of 
non-combatants. 

All these humane rules could well be observed by 
any ordinary cruiser ; and they were, in fact, kept by 
the Emden and other German cruisers when harrying 
British commerce in the East. But it is obvious at the 
first glance that a submarine would be continually in 
difficulties over them. It would always be risky for 
so fragile and unhandy a vessel to board and search a 
big ship, which might prove to be armed with guns or 
bombs. No submarine could find room for merchant 
crews or passengers in her own small compartments, 
and no submarine could afford to spare a prize crew 
for even one prize, or the time and horse-power to tow 
her into port. In short, it was plain, from the first, 
that the legitimate cruiser game could not be played 
at all by submarine boats. The Government of the 
United States put the truth unanswerably in these 
words : ' The employment of submarines for the 
destruction of enemy trade is of necessity completely 
irreconcilable with the principles of humanity, with 
the long existing undisputed rights of neutrals, and with I 
the sacred privileges of non-combatants.' 




Turning passengers and crews adrift in open^ boats.' 

[See page 77, 



SUBMARINES AND WAR POLICY 77 

The British Navy had an advantage here — the in- 
estimable advantage of a force that could keep the sea 
against all its enemies. It was, therefore, possible for 
our submarines to stop an occasional ship with impunity, 
or to call up a destroyer and send a prize into port ; 
and in the narrow waters of the Baltic and the Sea of 
Marmora, supply ships and merchantmen were captured 
and destroyed by them with every regard for the laws 
of humanity. But the German submarines had no 
fleet at sea to back their attempted blockade, and 
German war policy therefore took the downward 
course, hacking a way through the rules, and sacrificing, 
for the hope of victory, the very foundations of civilised 
human life. The U-boats began by turning passengers 
and crews adrift in open boats, no matter in what 
weather or how far from land. They went on to sink 
even great liners without search, and without warning ; 
and they came finally down to the destruction of 
helpless men and women in boats, in order that the 
ships they had torpedoed might disappear without a 
trace — spilrlos versenkt. 



CHAPTER VI 

SUBMARINE V. WAR- SHIP 

The use of the submarine for attacking war-ships is, 
of course, perfectly legitimate, and the powers and 
possibilities of this weapon were much discussed before 
the War. Some writers of note believed that the day 
of the big battleship was practically over — that such 
vessels could be ' pulJed down ' with certainty by 
any enterprising submarine commander, without any 
corresponding risk to his own boat. Others, with 
cooler or more scientific heads, maintained that there 
is an answer to every weapon, and that the introduction 
of submarines would not change the principles of war. 
The result has shown that the latter school of opinion 
was right. The submarine has achieved some striking 
successes here and there against the larger ships of 
war, but has not rendered them obsolete or kept them 
from going about their true business, the control of 
the sea ; and as time goes on, it is rather the submarine 
than the battle-ship which is found too vulnerable to 
challenge a fight, when neither has the advantage of 
surprise. 

This legitimate use of the submarine formed part, 
as we have seen, of both British and German war 
policy — though, in our own case, it was originally con- 
sidered rather as a means of defence against invasion,* 

78 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 79 

than of offence on the high seas. It was, therefore, 
not unnatural that the U-boat should score first. 
Besides, we were offering a hundred targets to one. 
Our cruisers were all over the North Sea, while no 
German ships could be met there except an occasional 
mine-layer like the Konigin Luise. This state of 
things has only become more invariable as the War has 
developed; and the most remarkable result, so far, of 
the contest between the two submarine services is the 
practical equality of the score on the two sides. With 
infinitely fewer and more difficult chances, the British 
submarine has actually surpassed the U-boat's record, 
in successes obtained against enemy ships of war, and 
immensely surpassed it in the proportion of successes 
to opportunities. 

The first war- ship to fall to the torpedo of a sub- 
marine was the Pathfinder, a light cruiser of about 
5,000 tons, with a complement of 268 officers and men, 
of whom some half were saved. The boat which sank 
her was the U. 21, commanded by Lieutenant Hersing, 
who raised high hopes in Germany which he was not 
destined to fulfil. 

A greater captain is said to have been Captain 
Otto Weddigen, who achieved the sensational feat 
of pulling down three of our cruisers in one hour, and 
was supposed by some of his fellow-countrymen to 
have solved the problem of reducing the British Fleet 
to an equality with the German. But he owed more 
to luck and our inexperience than to any peculiar skill 
of his own; In the early morning of September 22, 
1914, he stalked the armoured cruisers Aboukir, Hogue, 
and Cressy y old ships of 12,000 tons and 18 knots' speed, 
which were out on patrol duty in the North Sea, and 



80 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

were about to take up their stations for the day's work. 
The danger of the submarine was hardly yet fully 
recognised; and when the Aboukir was struck by a 
violent explosion, the general belief in the squadron 
was that she had run foul of a mine. She listed heavily 
and sank slowly, her funnels almost level with the 
water, and the smoke coming out as from the water's 
edge. The other two ships closed her at once, and 
had got within two cables of her when the Hogue was 
struck in turn by two torpedoes almost simultaneously. 
The effect was extraordinary. ' She seemed,' says an 
eye-witness, ' to give one jump out of the water and 
then to go straight down.' So quickly did she go, 
that she was out of sight long before Aboukir, who 
took twenty minutes to sink, so that her men (as one 
of them said) ' got time to do the best.' 

The moment the Hogue was struck, it was realised 
that submarines were at work, and Cressy opened fire 
from one of her 9*2-in. guns. She was hit herself by 
two torpedoes immediately afterwards, and listed 
heavily, so that everything began to roll down the deck. 
But she sank slowly and her gunners kept up their fire 
most gallantly, giving up their chance of being saved 
for the hope of killing their enemy before they went 
down. They fired a dozen shots in all, and are said by 
Lieutenant Harrison to have sunk one of the attacking 
U-boats. ' I reckon her gunners,' said a survivor from 
the Aboukir, ' were about the bravest men that ever 
lived. They kept up the firing until she had 40 degrees 
of list. They died gamely, did those fellows.' Their 
shipmates were worthy of them. ' There was absolutely 
no panic on the cruiser ; the men were as calm as at 
drill.' At last some trawlers came up ; and, after two 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 81 

hours, some destroyers. Only 777 of the three ships' 
crews were saved, out of a total of about 2,100 ; and 
60 officers were lost out of 120. ' Some of our men 
must have been in the water for three or four hours. 
The Aboukir men were taken to the Hogue ; when the 
Hogue was sunk, they were taken to the Cressy ; when 
the Cressy was taken, they were thrown in the sea again. 
Yet here they are, and there is only one thing they 
want — to go to sea again and have another whack at 
the men who torpedoed them.' 

Possibly they had their wish ; for some of them may 
have been on board the British ship which, a few months 
later, destroyed U. 29 (Weddigen's boat) by a brilliant 
and almost reckless feat of seamanship, which, in later 
days, will form a favourite yarn of the Service. 

The only other war-ship lost by submarine action in 
1914 was the Hawke, an armoured cruiser twenty- 
five years old, which was torpedoed while on patrol in 
the North Sea, and sank in ten minutes, only seventy 
of those on board being saved. The year 1915 began 
badly for us, and ended by being decidedly our worst 
year on one side the account, though it was our best 
on the other. At 2 o'clock in the morning of January 1, 
a squadron of battle-ships, of the older types of 1901 and 
1902, was steaming down Channel in line ahead. There 
was a gale blowing, and the sea was running high. The 
last two ships of the line were the London and the 
Formidable, the latter of which was suddenly shaken 
by a violent explosion, and not long afterwards by a 
second one. Even then, the ship did not sink till 
forty-five minutes after; and if it had not been for the 
rough weather and icy water, boats and rafts might 
have been got away with most of the crew. As it 



82 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

was, no steam-pinnaces could be got out, and the oars 
of the 42-foot cutter and other boats were nearly all 
smashed against the ship's sides. The whole company, 
from the officers, giving quiet orders on the bridge, to 
the men smoking on the slant deck, behaved as if at 
manoeuvres, and Captain Loxley, who went down with 
his ship, distinguished himself by signalling to the 
London not to stand by him, as there was a submarine 
about. One boat came ashore at Lyme Regis, with 
forty-six live men and nine dead in her ; seventy more 
men were brought in after three hours' hard and 
dangerous work by the 50-ton smack, Provident, of Brix- 
ham — William Pillar, skipper. His crew consisted of 
three men and a cook-boy. Out of a total complement 
of more than 700, only 201 were saved in all. Among 
the lost were thirty-four officers, including eight mid- 
shipmen and a sub-lieutenant. 

On March 11, the Bayano, an armed merchant- cruiser, 
was torpedoed off the Firth of Clyde, and went down 
with 170 of her 200 men. On April 11, the Wayfarer 
transport was torpedoed, and ran ashore off Queens- 
town. On May 1, the Recruit, a small torpedo-boat 
of 385 tons, was sunk in the North Sea, with thirty- 
nine out of her sixty-four officers and men. 

Then came two grave losses on two consecutive 
days. The British Fleet off Gallipoli had already lost 
the Irresistible and Ocean by floating mines ; and now 
the U-boats succeeded in inflicting another double loss 
on us, at a moment when the Army needed the strongest 
support to ensure success. On May 26, a single torpedo 
sank the Triumph, while she was co-operating with the 
Australian and New Zealand troops before Ari Burnu. 
She was accompanied by an escort of two destroyers, and 




• Were brought in by the 50-ton smack, Provident, of Brixhai 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 85 

was about to open fire when the submarine got a shot 
into her. She listed till her deck touched the water, 
and in five minutes capsized completely, but remained 
floating for twenty minutes, keel upwards. Some 460 
of the officers and men were saved. 

The Triumph was not designed for our Navy, but 
taken over from the builder's yard, and the curious 
arch formed by her derricks made her outline a con- 
spicuously foreign feature in our Fleet. The Majestic, 
on the other hand, which quickly followed her to 
destruction, was a typically British vessel, and gave 
her name to the whole class, built in 1895 and the 
following years, and then greatly admired. She also, 
on May 27, was supporting the army in action on the 
Gallipoli peninsula, when a German torpedo ended her 
twenty years' career. She carried about 760 officers 
and men, but nearly all of them were saved. In June, 
two torpedo-boats, the Greenfly and Mayfly, of 215 
tons, were sunk ; the Roxburgh, a 10,000-ton cruiser, 
was slightly damaged ; and the Lightning torpedo-boat, 
of 275 tons, was disabled, but brought into harbour. 
On .August 8, a U-boat sank one of our large auxiliary 
cruisers, the India, off the coast of Norway and in 
Norwegian territorial waters. By this breach of the 
rules, she succeeded in killing 10 officers and 150 men, 
out of a complement of over 300. 

The losses so far enumerated were all stricdy naval 
losses. Up to this time, although we had been trans- 
porting troops by the hundred thousand from Canada 
and Australia to England, and from England to France, 
India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Gallipoli, our numbers 
had hardly suffered the smallest diminution by sub- 
marine action. Again, during the last three years 



86 SUBMARINE AND ANTI SUBMARINE 

(1916-18) we have had minor losses now and then ; but 
the one and only real disaster of this kind came upon 
us in 1915. On August 14, the British transport, the 
Royal Edward, was in the iEgean, carrying reinforce- 
ments for the 29th Division in Gallipoli, and details 
of the Royal Army Medical Corps, when she was tor- 
pedoed by a German submarine and sank rapidly. 
She had on board 32 military officers and 1,350 troops, 
in addition to her own crew of 220 officers and men. 
Of all these, only 600 were saved ; and for the first time 
in modern war we suffered the cruel loss of soldiers to 
the strength of a whole battalion killed — not in battle, but 
helpless and unresisting, without the chance of firing a 
shot or delivering a last charge with the bayonet. The 
ship herself was a less harrowing loss; but she was a fine 
vessel that we could ill spare — a steel triple-screw steamer 
of 11,117 tons and 545 feet in length. She, like her sister 
ship, the Royal George, was originally built for the 
Egyptian Mail Steamship Company, and ran between 
Marseilles and Alexandria. Her later service was carry- 
ing the mails for the Canadian Northern Steamship 
Company between Avonmouth aud Montreal — and now 
she had returned to Eastern waters, only to give an 
isolated and inconclusive triumph to a desperate enemy. 
The remainder of the year saw many attempts by 
the U-boat commanders to repeat this success ; but 
they mostly ended in failure. On September 2, the 
transport Southland was hit by a torpedo, but got into 
Madras under her own steam, with a loss of 30 men 
killed in the explosion. On September 19, the Ramazan, 
with 385 Indian troops on board, was shelled and sunk 
by a submarine, off Antikythera. In October, the trans- 
port Marquette was sunk in the iEgean. On November 3, 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 87 

the transport Mercian was heavily shelled, and had 
nearly 100 killed and wounded. On November 5 
the Tar a, armed boarding- steamer, was sunk in the 
Bay of Solium, on the eastern border of Egypt; and 
immediately afterwards two small Customs cruisers— 
the Prince Abbas of 300 tons and the Abdul Moneim 
of 450 — were sunk at the same place, and no doubt by 
the same pair of U-boats. 

The year 1916 showed clearly that, as a weapon 
against armed ships, the U-boat was not likely to 
succeed, after the first period of surprise was past. 
During this year we lost three mine-sweepers — Primula, 
Clacton, and Genista ; two empty transports — the 
Russian and Franconia ; the Zaida and Duke of Alb ( my t 
armed steamers of the auxiliary patrol ; and one 
destroyer, the Lassoo, which was sunk with a loss of 
six men, either by mine or torpedo, off the coast of 
Holland. To this insignificant list must be added one 
disaster of a more serious kind. As we have already 
noted, our control of the North Sea was a continuous 
and effective control, and every effort was made, 
especially after the flight of the Germans from Jutland, 
to bring out the enemy fleet from its hiding-place- 
These efforts, of course, involved the exposure of our 
advanced forces to certain risks. On August 19, there 
was a report that the High Canal Fleet was at 
sea again. Hope outstripped belief, and light cruisers 
were sent oat in every direction to find the enemy. 
Two of these, the Nottingham and the Falmouth — good 
ships of 5,400 and 5,250 tons — were torpedoed and 
sunk while scouting. Here again it was the loss of the 
men which we felt most. The ships were new and useful 
ones; but they could be replaced, and they belonged 



88 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

to a class in whicr the enemy's force, since the battle 
of Jutland, had been deficient, almost to a disabling 
degree. There was no ground for the German hope 
that our naval superiority could be permanently 
whittled away by rare and fractional losses like these. 
Our Battle Fleet continued to hold up theirs, and our 
blockade of their coasts was in no degree weakened. 

The record of 1917, and the first half of 1918, is 
even more significant. The German submarine effort 
was more and more completely diverted from legitimate 
to illegitimate war — from the attack on the enemy's 
armed forces, to the destruction of non-combatants and 
neutrals in mercantile shipping of any kind. British 
destroyers, going everywhere, facing every kind of 
risk, and protecting everyone before themselves, now 
and again furnished an item to the German submarine 
bag ; but the ' regardless ' campaign against the world's 
trade and the world's tonnage was now the U-boats' 
chief occupation. One legitimate objective they did 
still set before themselves — the destruction or hindrance 
of transport for the United States army between the 
shores of America and Europe. Again and again 
during 1917, and even in the earlier days of 1918, 
assurances were given to the German people by Admiral 
von Tirpitz, by Admiral von Capelle, by the Prussian 
Minister of Finance in the Diet, and by the chief military 
writers in the Press, that the promise of an American 
army was a boast and a deception, that the American 
troops could not and would not cross the Atlantic, 
because of the triumphant activity of the U-boats. 
Of the complete failure to make good these assurances 
no better account need be given than that supplied 
by the German Admiralty, in answer to the complaints 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 89 

of their own people. Towards the end of July 1918, 
when there was no longer any possibility of concealing 
the presence of a large and victorious American force 
in France, Admiral von Holtzendorff, the Admiralty 
Chief of Staff, gave the following explanation to the 
Kolnische Zeitung. He admitted the success of the 
Allies in improving oversea transport, especially the 
transport of troops from America. But in reply to 
the statement that there was in Germany much dis- 
appointment that the submarines had sunk so few of 
the American transports, he asked, with truly Prussian 
effrontery, how could submarines be specially employed 
against American transports. * The Americans,' he 
said, ' have at their disposition, for disembarkation, 
the coasts from the North of Scotland to the French 
Mediterranean ports, with dozens of landing-places. 
Ought we to let our submarines lie in wait before these 
ports, to see whether they can possibly get a shot at 
a strongly protected American transport, escorted by 
fast convoying vessels ? The convoys do not arrive 
with the regularity and frequency of railway trains 
at a great station, T)ut irregularly, at great intervals of 
time, and often at night or in a fog. Taking all this 
into consideration, it is evident how little prospect of 
success is offered for the special employment of sub- 
marines against American transports.' 

This is all sound enough, and in fact the U-boats 
have only succeeded in killing 126 men out of the first 
million landed from America. But the argument of 
Admiral von Holtzendorff does not explain the official 
assurances by which the German public was deceived 
for more than a year, and it only partially explains 
the ill success of the U-boats. That could only be fully 



90 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

done by considering the offensive (or offensive-defen- 
sive) action of war-ship against submarine — which will 
be touched upon presently. 

The record of the ' bag ' made during the War by 
our own submarines has never yet been published in 
a complete form. Yet it is a most striking one, and 
ought effectually to remove any impression that the 
' German Submarine Service is in any way superior — 
or even equal — to ours. In three years of war our 
boats sank over 300 enemy vessels. We lost, of course, 
many more ; but when it is remembered that we were 
offering to our enemies every week more than four 
times as many targets as they offered us during the 
whole three years, it will be admitted that the com- 
parison is not one to give them much ground for satis- 
faction. At present, however, this general comparison 
is not the one which we wish to make — we are concerned 
now with attacks on war- ships, or armed forces, and 
not on mercantile shipping. The greater part of our 
record is made up of such attacks, and it is now possible 
to give a short summary of them. 

There have been, during this War, practically only 
three hunting-grounds where British submarines could 
hope to meet with enemy war- ships, transports, or supply 
ships. These are the North Sea, the Baltic, and the 
Dardanelles or Sea of Marmora. Of the work done 
by our submarines in the Baltic and Dardanelles we 
shall have separate accounts to give in later chapters. 
For the present, it is enough to tabulate the results. 
In the Baltic the bag included, besides a large number 
of steamers (some carrying iron ore for military use), 
the following war-ships : three destroyers, three trans- 
ports, one old battleship or cruiser, one light cruiser, 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 91 

and one armed auxiliary. In the Dardanelles or Sea 
of Marmora were sunk or destroyed the following, 
besides a very large number of ships with stores or 
provisions for the troops in Gallipoli : two battle-ships, 
four gun-boats, one armed German auxiliary, seven 
transports, three ammunition ships and one ammunition 
train, destroyed by gun-fire. We may add, as a note 
to these two parts of our record, that the work was 
done, not by a large number of submarines issuing 
in relays from a home base close at hand, and equipped 
with every kind of facility for repairing defects or 
relieving tired crews, but by an almost incredibly 
small number of boats, working far from their base, 
in closed waters, and under difficulties such as no 
German boat has ever successfully attempted to 
face. 

There remains the North Sea patrol. The first suc- 
cess in this record stands against a famous name — 
that of Commander Max Horton, who (in his boat E. 9) 
afterwards established what has been called 'The 
Command of the Baltic' In September 13, 1914, he 
was in the North Sea, near to enemy forces. He was 
submerged, and not in the happiest of circumstances, 
for one of his officers was ill, and to afford him some 
relief from the exhausted atmosphere below, it became 
imperatively necessary to rise to the surface. No 
sooner was the periscope above water, than the com- 
mander sighted a German light cruiser, the HSla, in a 
position where she might be expected to see the periscope 
and attack at any moment. Fortunately a torpedo- 
tube was loaded and bearing. Commander Horton 
took a snap-shot and dived. The shot went home, and 
the HSla troubled the patrol of E. 9 no more. On 



92 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

October 6, a German destroyer (S. 116) fell to another 
shot from the same hand. 

After this, game was much scarcer. The German 
Admiralty tried to establish a paper command of the 
North Sea, kept up (for the benefit of the German public) 
by runaway raids on our East Coast towns ; but any* 
thing like a regular patrol was impossible to discover. 
In the following eighteen months, however, our sub- 
marines did succeed in two attacks on stray German 
destroyers, and four on armed auxiliary vessels. Lieut.- 
Commander Benning (E. 5) hit an auxiliary in April 
1915, but did not sink her. In June, Lieut.-Commander 
Moncrieffe hit another, the America, so badly that she 
was run ashore. In September, Commander Benning 
sank a third outright ; and in December, Lieut.-Com- 
mander Duff -Dunbar (E. 16) secured a larger one of 
3,000 tons. Of the destroyers, the first (V. 188) was 
got by Commander C. P. Talbot, in E. 16, on July 26 I 
and the second on February 4, 1916, by Lieut-Com- 
mander H. W. Shove, in E. 2i9. This was a boat of the 
'S. 138 ' class, but she could not be further identified, 
nor did any British eye actually witness her final 
disappearance. 

The rest of the bag is, for the most part, a forbidden 
subject. The items are many, the loss to the enemy 
was great ; but as he is racking his brains to get or guess 
the details, it is no part of our business^ to help him. 
There are, however, two items of which we may speak 
with open satisfaction. One is the capture of a German 
trawler — of this we have already heard from the Admi- 
ral Commanding our Submarine Base, in Chapter IV. 
The simple story is that Lieut.-Commander G. Kellett, 
finding his boat (S. 1) so far disabled that she could not 



SUBMARINE v. WAR-SHIP 93 

get home on her own engines, took over a German 
trawler by force, without attracting undue attention, 
and came safely into port, towed from enemy waters 
by an enemy boat. The remaining item hardly falls 
within our range ; but though not submarine work, 
it is work actually done by a submarine, and may be 
classed, perhaps, with the destruction of the ammuni- 
tion train by Lieut- Commander Cochrane at Yarandji. 
On May 4, 1916, a Zeppelin (L. 7) fell to Lieut.-Com- 
mander F. E. B. Feilman, in E. 31, and he brought 
home seven of her crew as prisoners. 

Even this is not all. In 1916, our submarines 
inflicted on the German Fleet itself four blows, which, 
though they were none of them actually fatal, must yet 
have been extremely damaging to the nerve of the 
Service, and certainly cost heavily for repairs both in 
time and labour. On August 19, the Westfalen — a 
battle-ship of 18,000 tons, built in 1908 — was torpedoed 
by Lieut.-Commander Turner, in E. 23. On October 19, 
Lieut.-Commander Jessop severely damaged the light 
cruiser Munchen, of 3,200 tons ; and on November 5, 
Commander Lawrence (in J. 1) achieved the brilliant 
feat of torpedoing two German Dreadnoughts — the 
Grosser Kurfurst, which was laid down in 1913 and 
finished since the War began, and the Kronprinz^ which 
was both laid down and commissioned since August 
1914. A success of this kind, though not final, may 
well be set against the sinking of much older and more 
vulnerable ships, like the Formidable, Triumph, and 
Majestic ; and it must be remembered that the dis- 
appearance of these three from our Navy List, however 
regrettable, had absolutely no effect on the relative 
strength of the British and German Battle Fleets ; 



94 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

whereas the loss, for some months at any rate, of two 
great Dreadnoughts like the Grosser Kurfurst and 
Kronprinz — coming as it did shortly after the Jutland 
losses — carried the inferiority of Admiral von Scheer'S 
force to the point of impotence. In the match of 
submarine against war-ship, our boats had succeeded 
where the U-boats had signally failed. 



CHAPTER VII 

WAR-SHIP V. SUBMARINE 

The story of the contest between our war-ships and their 
new enemy, the submarine, is the story of a most remark- 
able and successful adaptation. Of the six principal 
methods of defence used by our Navy at the end of the 
fourth year of war, three are old and three new ; and 
it is a striking proof of the scientific ability of the Service, 
that the three old methods have been carefully recon- 
sidered, and that, instead of abandoning them because, 
in their original use, they were apparently obsolete, our 
officers have turned them to even better account than 
the new inventions. 

The oldest device for the protection of war-ships 
against torpedoes — whether fired by torpedo-boats or 
submarines — is the net, Our older battle-ships, as 
everyone will remember, were fitted with a complete 
set of steel nets on both sides, and with long booms for 
hanging them out. These booms, when not in use, were 
lashed diagonally along the ship's sides, like great 
stitches, and gave the typical vessels of the British Fleet 
a peculiar and decidedly smart appearance. Very 
smart, too, was the quickness and precision with which the 
order ' Out torpedo nets ! 'was executed ; but — long before 
1914 — everyone was perfectly aware that the nets were 
practically as much out of date as masts and sails 

95 



96 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

They were so heavy, and hung so low in the water, that no 
ship could manoeuvre in them, and even for a fleet at 
anchor they had ceased to be a trustworthy defence; 
for the Whitehead torpedo was now fitted with cutters 
which could shear a way through the steel meshes. 

Nets of the old type, therefore, have played no part 
in the present War — unless we are to believe the Turkish 
account of the sinking of the Ocean in the Dardanelles, 
according to which the nets were out, and were not only 
useless as a protection, but dragged down some of our men 
when they might otherwise have escaped by swimming. 
But, because one type of net is obsolete, the British 
Navy has seen no reason to reject all nets as impractic- 
able. It is not beyond imagination to conceive a net 
so light and large of mesh, that it will diminish by no 
n\ore than one knot the speed of the ship which carries 
it, and will yet catch and deflect a torpedo in the act 
of passing through it. For it must be remembered that 
the real problem is not how to stop a torpedo in its 
full 30 -knot career, but how to prevent it from striking 
the ship with its head at an angle not too fine for the 
detonator to be fired. A turn of the helm, or the mere 
wave from the cut-water of a fast ship, has often sent 
a torpedo running harmlessly away along the quarter. 
The net of the future may be found equally successful in 
catching the fish by its whiskers and turning it forward 
along the bow, where the same wave will drive it out- 
wards from the ship's course. 

The second familiar means of defence was the gun. 
Here again there was a temptation to despair. The 
secondary armament of any battle-ship or cruiser was 
fairly certain to make short work of a torpedo-boat, or 
of a submarine visible upon the surface. But no living 



WAR-SHIP v. SUBMARINE 97 

gunner had ever fired at the periscope of a submarine — 
a mark only two feet, at most, out of the water, and only, 
four inches in diameter. To see such an object at, 
say, 1,000 yards, was difficult ; to hit it might well seem 
impossible. Yet 1,000 yards was but one-tenth of the 
possible range at which a modern submarine might 
fire its torpedo. 

Nevertheless the use of the gun was not discarded,' 
and two important discoveries were made in conse- 
quence. The first of these was that gunfire may be 
distant, wild, or even unaimed, and yet have an excellent 
effect. The existence of a submarine is so precarious — 
its chance of surviving a single direct hit is so slight — 
that the mere sound of a gun will almost always be 
enough to make it submerge completely — unless it can 
engage the enemy, with superior gun-power, at a range 
of its own choosing. When Captain Weddigen had 
already hit the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy, 
and all three were sinking, the sound of the Cressy 9 s 
guns was enough to cause his disappearance, though it 
is very improbable that the shooting was really danger- 
ous ; for the listing of the ship was rapid, and according 
to eye-witnesses, the gallant gunners were soon firing in 
the air. Since then, the same thing has been repeatedly 
observed ; and some brilliant successes by our patrol- 
boats and trawlers have shown that the U-boat has 
every right to be nervous when it hears even a 6-pounder 
talking English. 

The other discovery is a much more recent one. As 
soon as it was once recognised that a torpedo is just 
as innocuous when deflected, as when stopped or evaded, 
the idea was sure to strike the handiest gunners in the 
world that they might use their weapons to disturb the 



98 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

straightforwardness of the fish's onset. Even thirty 
knots is nothing to the velocity of a modern shell, 
and without hoping for a direct hit on an object from 
six to twenty-two feet under water, it was thought 
possible to give a twist to the torpedo's nose sufficient 
to make a potential hit into a miss or a glancing shot. 
This feat was actually performed by the gunners of 
the Justitia, who, with splendid coolness, shot at tor- 
pedoes as sportsmen used to shoot at oncoming tigers, 
and succeeded in killing or diverting several, only to 
fall at last before the rush of numbers. 

A third weapon of the war- ship was the ram ; and 
the use of this, being an offensive -defensive method, 
was the best of all, as we shall see presently. It was, 
from the beginning, present to the mind of every naval 
man, for A. 1 (our very first submarine) was lost, with all 
hands, in May, 1904, by being accidentally rammed in 
the act of submerging. It happened, too, that the first 
attack made by a submarine against British war-ships 
in the present War was beaten by this method. On 
August 9, 1914, a squadron of our light cruisers sighted 
the periscope of a German U-boat, which had succeeded 
in approaching to within short range of them. In the 
account of the affair published at the time, we were 
informed that H.M.S. Birmingham had sunk the 
submarine by a direct hit on the periscope, and that 
this was the only shot fired. Some time afterwards, 
the truth became known — the Birmingham had to her 
credit, not an impossible feat of gunnery, but a brilliant 
piece of seamanship. She had gone full speed for the 
enemy, and rammed him. Her captain was not led to 
do this by inspiration or desperation, but by a scientific 
knowledge of the elements in the problem. Without 




' She ha,d gone full speed for the enemy, and rammed him. 



WAR-SHIP v. SUBMARINE 101 

stopping to think afresh, he knew that a submarine 
takes a certain time to dive to a safe depth, and that 
his own ship, at 27 knots, would cover a good 900 yards 
of sea in one minute. When his eye measured the 
distance of that periscope, he saw that — given straight 
steering— the result was a mathematical certainty. 

The new methods introduced during the War are also 
three in number. Of one — the use of dazzle-painting — 
we have already heard. It is, of course, a purely defensive 
measure, intended to deceive the eye at the periscope 
by misrepresenting the ship's size, distance, and course. 
Another deceptive device is the phantom ship or dummy. 
A vessel of comparatively small size and value is covered 
more or less completely with a superstructure of light 
wood -work, with sham funnels, turrets and big guns, so 
that she has all the appearance of a battle-cruiser or 
Dreadnought. The U-boat may run after her, or run 
from her, according to his feeling at the moment ; but, 
in either case, he will be wasting his time and laying up 
disappointment for himself. In May, 1915, during the 
Gallipoli campaign, the Germans spent a certain amount 
of time and trouble in torpedoing a ship which they 
supposed to be H.M.S. Agamemnon, and in their illus- 
trated propaganda sheets they give a picture of that 
ship as one of the victims of the irresistible U-boats. 
For a short time the story was believed inside Constanti- 
nople, and Mr. Lewis Einstein, of the American Embassy 
there, relates in his diary that this success, coming (as 
it appeared to do) immediately after the sinking of the 
Triumph and Majestic, was almost more than he could 
bear. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he soon 
discovered the truth. The supposed Agamemnon was 
a dummy, and lay for some time near the entrance of 



102 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the Dardanelles, with her false turrets and sham guns, 
exposed to the view of friends and foes on the two shores* 
Very possibly this dummy received a shot which might 
otherwise have been successfully directed against a 
genuine battle-ship, and the deception was thus really 
useful. The German cunning is expended in a very 
different direction. Its object is often to deceive their 
own people as to what has actually been lost, not to 
avert a possible loss at our hands. Thus when the 
super-submarine Bremen was sunk on her outward 
voyage for America, one dummy Bremen after another 
was ostentatiously brought home to a German port, 
as if returning from a successful Atlantic passage. A 
more flagrant instance still was the statement that, 
among the German losses in the Battle of Jutland, was 
the sinking of the Pommern, a small and obsolete battle- 
ship of 13,000 tons, built in 1905. The British 
Admiralty, who knew that that older Pommern had 
been sunk in the Baltic by Commander Max Horton, 
nearly a year before, had no difficulty in identifying 
the Pommern lost at Jutland with a new Dreadnought of 
the largest type, commissioned since her predecessor's 
destruction and christened by her name — either then or 
at the moment when it became necessary to put a good 
face on their disasters in the battle. It is to be hoped 
that this state of things may continue on both sides, 
The Germans are welcome to our phantom ships, if we 
thereby save our real ones ; while, if we can sink their 
real ones, we may well be content to hear them given 
imaginary names. The two Services have different 
ideas of what is a useful dummy. 

The newest method of preserving ships from the 
torpedo is a purely constructional device, and very little 



WAR-SHIP v. SUBMARINE 103 

can be said of it here. But we have been allowed to 
know this much — the Marlborough was torpedoed at 
Jutland, but returned to the line of battle within nine 
minutes, fought for three hours, and eventually came 
home under her own steam, defeating a submarine attack 
on the way. We are not told how this very satisfactory 
result is attained in the construction of a Dreadnought 
of 25,000 tons, capable of full battle-ship speed. It 
cannot be by the mere addition of the bulging compart- 
ments known as 'blisters,' for in the older cruisers in 
which these were tried they were found to cause too 
great a sacrifice of speed. The result, however, is there ; 
and there can be no doubt that as the number of unsink- 
able ships increases, the activity of the U-boat will be 
very greatly discouraged. 

But it would be contrary to the principles of war and 
the genius of our Navy, to rely upon purely defensive 
measures to defeat the submarine enemy. It is some- 
times said that the U-boat campaign took us by surprise. 
So far as this applies to the legitimate use of the sub- 
marine against war-ships, the statement is quite untrue. 
The campaign against merchant shipping and non- 
combatant passengers, waged in defiance of all inter- 
national law and common humanity, did certainly take 
us by surprise ; and it is only to our credit, and the 
discredit of our enemies, that their barbarity was beyond 
our imagination. But the efforts of the U-boats against 
our fleet were, as we have shown in a previous chapter, 
actually less successful than our own attacks upon 
theirs, and our tacticians were never for a moment at 
a loss to deal with them. The principles had been 
thought out long ago. As early as 1907, the distin- 
guished admiral who writes over the name ' Barfleur ' 



104 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

clearly stated his belief that ' the untried submarine ' 
was not likely to prove more effective than the torpedo- 
boat and destroyer in depriving our Battle Fleet of the 
control of the sea. ' Nothing is more to be deprecated,' 
he added, ' than the attempt which has been made to 
enhance unduly its importance, by playing on the 
credulity of the public. The new instrument of war 
has no doubt a value, but that it is anything more than 
an auxiliary, with limited and special uses, is difficult 
to believe.' And he turned back to old and tried prin- 
ciples : ' The traditional role of the British Navy is not 
to act on the defensive, but to prepare to attack the 
force which threatens.' In September, 1914, when 
Weddigen's coup showed that the moment had come, 
4 Barfleur ' was among the first to attack the new prob- 
lem tactically — he saw at once that the war-ship's best 
defence lies in the offensive power given by her immense 
superiority in speed and weight. And if the single ship 
is formidable to the submarine, a squadron is still more 
so. By its formation, its manoeuvres, its pace and its 
ramming power, it reverses the whole situation — the 
hunter becomes the hunted, and must fly like a wolf 
from a pack of wolf-hounds, every one more powerful 
than itself. 

There remains, of course, the question of the best 
formation for the squadron to adopt. Upon this point 
there are more opinions than one, and a conversation 
may be reported in which the merits of line abreast and 
line ahead were set against one another by two naval 
officers, and both put out of court by a third. The first 
two were captains commanding ships in two different 
squadrons. They argued the question between them 
with great seriousness; but in so cool and abstract a 



WAR-SHIP v. SUBMARINE 105 

manner, that the spectator might be pardoned for sus- 
pecting — rightly or wrongly — that they were supporting 
doctrines which were not personal to themselves but 
derived from higher authority — perhaps from their 
respective admirals, both men of great ability and 
experience. It was noticeable,- too, that the admiral 
at whose table the disputants were sitting, and who 
himself commanded yet another squadron, maintained 
an attitude of neutrality ; though it is certain that he 
and his own officers, several of whom were present, had 
often discussed the problem, and were probably agreed 
upon the answer to it. 

4 Speed,' said Captain A, ' seems to be the key to 
the solution. It is only in line ahead that speed helps 
you — in fact gives you something like practical safety. 
If a torpedo, fired at a column in line ahead, misses the 
ship it is aimed at, it is very unlikely to be so wide a 
shot as to hit either the next ahead or next astern — 
it is a miss directly it crosses the line.' 

Captain B remained perfectly grave, but he looked 
very well content with this argument. ' Yes,' he said, 
8 theoretically ; but, in fact, the contrary has happened. 
In a column of eight ships, in line ahead, the London 
and the Formidable were the last two. You remember 
that the torpedo which sank the Formidable was believed 
to have been meant for the London. And anyhow, 
speed and stormy weather failed to save the rear 
ship.' 

4 The speed was insufficient,' replied Captain A, 
1 not worth calling speed. When your fleet is in line 
abreast, columns disposed astern, the theoretical chances 
of hitting are much greater. Speed is no advantage in 
such a formation — in fact it may be a positive disad- 



106 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

vantage. It may actually increase the virtual target. 
A shot which misses the near ship of a line abreast may 
still hit one of the others.' 

' Laurence,' said Captain B, c when he fired at the 
Moltke, considered her, as wing ship of the squadron, to 
be his only chance.' 

' There was no second line disposed astern,' replied 
Captain A ; ' but even so, if his torpedo had just missed, 
ahead of the Moltke, the next or next but one in the 
line might have come forward just in time to receive 
the shot.' 

6 Thatj' said Captain B, ' is a mere question of time 
and distance ; and, in anything like ordinary circum- 
stances, you would not get your result. Say the ships 
are three cables apart, and doing only fifteen knots. 
The torpedo is going double the speed ; but by the time 
it has run the three cables along the line, the next ship 
will have gone one and a half cables ahead and be past 
the danger point.' 

' Your ship may be zigzagging,' replied Captain A, 
6 and run right into it. Line ahead has the advantage 
there — in fact, speaking generally, I have the power, 
which you have not, of immediate deployment in any 
direction. I can avoid mines, or turn away from the 
submarine altogether.' 

4 Certainly,' said Captain B, looking again quite 
well content, ' but you would not turn away in any 
case — you would best defend yourself by attacking the 
submarine.' 

Captain A hesitated a moment. ' Yes,' he replied 
at last, ' but in line abreast your attack might be posi- 
tively dangerous to yourself. Suppose your columns 
in line abreast to be zigzagging, as they probably would 



WAR-SHIP v. SUBMARINE 107 

be, and imagine one of your ships to put her helm the 
wrong way — there would inevitably be a collision. 5 

' 1 cannot imagine such a thing,' said Captain B. 

4 1 appeal to the Admiral,' said Captain A. 

It seemed an embarrassing thing, for a host and 
superior officer, to be called upon to give judgment 
between his guests' on so serious an argument. But 
the Admiral was not in the least embarrassed. He did 
not even express his own opinion, which was thought 
to favour Captain B. 'Let me remind you,' he said, 
' that you have not examined the most important 
witness in the case — the commander of the submarine. 
What order is the most dangerous for the submarine to 
meet ? I asked Commander C, one of our best E-boat 
officers, this question lately, and he replied " Quarter- 
line, undoubtedly." ' 

He turned to the only landsman present, and re- 
minded him that in a quarter-line, or bow- and- quarter 
line, the ships are echeloned each upon the quarter of 
the next ahead instead of directly astern. He added, 
6 A will say that this is in his favour^ because ships in a 
quarter-line are really in line ahead, only that each one 
in turn is a little out of the straight. And B will claim 
that he wins, because a quarter-line is merely a line 
abreast in which each ship lags a little more behind the 
true front. And C will tell us that the only thing 
which matters is that the quarter-line gives the unhappy 
submarine less chance of hitting, and more chance of 
being sunk than either of the other two formations. 
And thereupon the Court is adjourned.' 



CHAPTER VIII 

BRITISH SUBMARINES IN THE BALTTC 

The story of our submarine campaign in the Baltic is 
the first of two romances of the sea — one Northern and 
one Southern — the like of which is not to be found in 
the annals of the last 300 years. War must often make 
us familiar with obscure or long-forgotten places, the 
scenes of old voyages, and battles long ago ; but to 
-adventure with our submarines into the Baltic, or the 
Sea of Marmora, is to slip through unimagined dangers 
into a legendary world beyond all history — sailing the 
seas of the past, with the captains of the future. The 
exploration under water of those intricate and perilous 
channels was alone a discovery of supreme skill and 
daring ; and the brilliant acts of war achieved by the 
adventurers form only a minor part of the glory of 
being there at all. 

The first of our submarine voyagers in the Baltic 
was Lieut. -Commander Max Horton, in E. 9. Before 
the War was a year old his fame had spread far and 
wide; but the details of his success are not even yet 
generally known, and cannot be given here. By 
October 6, 1914, he had sunk a German light cruiser 
and a destroyer, both in the ' North Sea,' and it may 
perhaps be guessed that he had, at any rate, thought of 
penetrating into the Baltic. By January, 1915, he was 

108 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 109 

a full Commander, and had received the D.S.O. On 
the 29th of that month, he was not only in the Baltic, 
but was sinking a destroyer there ; on May 11, he bagged 
a transport ; and on June 5, he put to the credit of 
E. 9 another transport and another destroyer. Finally, 
on July 2, he torpedoed the Pommern, a 13,000-ton 
battle- ship of an older type, but armed with 11 -inch 
guns. 

On July 29, he slipped again, in company with E. 1 
(Commander N. F. Laurence), and after some indepen- 
dent hunting, the two boats both arrived at Reval. E. 9 
had attacked a cruiser and a submarine ; and, on August 
18, had had a covetous look at a squadron of battle- 
cruisers, detailed for the German attack on the Gulf 
of Riga. But as they were moving constantly in regular 
formation, and at high speed over a large area, it was 
not possible to deal satisfactorily with them. E. 1, how- 
ever, had had better luck. On August 19, Commander 
Laurence came to observation depth at 8.0 a.m., and 
under cover of a fog succeeded in stalking the same 
squadron. They were manoeuvring in line abreast, 
and within ten minutes came across E. l's bows, with 
destroyers on both flanks. Commander Laurence had, 
of course, only a single ship to aim at — the battle-cruiser 
on the wing nearest to him, which was ascertained to 
have been the Moltke, a 22,600-ton ship. At 8.20, he 
fired his starboard torpedo, and at the same moment 
dived to avoid a destroyer which was coming straight 
for him. His luck was good, both ways. The torpedo 
got home on the battle-cruiser, and the destroyer 
missed E. 1 by a few feet. The next day he reported 
to the Russian Admiral at Reval. 

These two boats were followed, on August 15, by 



110 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

E. 8 and E. 13. The fate of E. 13 will not be forgotten 
while there is any rightful indignation left in Europe. 
On August 19. she got ashore on a neutral coast — the 
Danish island of Saltholm — and there, with her crew 
upon her, was deliberately shot to pieces by a German 
war- ship, in defiance of all humanity and international 
law. Her officers and men behaved with perfect 
courage, but many of them were killed before they could 
get away from the wreck of their boat. 

Lieut. -Commander Goodhart's account of the voyage 
of E. 8 is a plain and business-like document, but to 
read it, with a map beside it, is to look far away into a 
world of historic names ard ever-present dangers. It 
is easy enough to imagine the passage up the Skager- 
Rak, always remembering that we must keep well out of 
the central line of traffic, and that in the afternoon we 
have to dive and pass under a whole fleet of steam traw- 
lers. At 7 p.m. it is possible to come to the surface again. 
The Commander orders full speed, rounds the Skaw, and 
enters the Kattegat. In the fading twilight, several 
merchant-steamers are seen going north. The shore and 
island lights twinkle out one by one — Hamnskar, Vinga, 
Skaw, Trindelen, and Anholt. The night is short. 
By 3.0 a.m. we must dive again, and lie quietly on shoal 
ground, while the traffic goes over us. At 5.25 a.m. we 
venture to the surface, but are put down quickly by 
a steamer. At 7.0 we venture again, and do a scurry 
of 1J hours in a friendly mist. Then down again, and 
crawl at 3 knots, till at 1.0 p.m. we are off the entrance 
to the Sound. 

Here Commander Goodhart has to make the choice 
between going forward submerged, or waiting for dark- 
ness and then attempting the channel on the surface. 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 111 

He is confident of being able to get to his position under 
water, and decides accordingly to continue diving into 
the Sound and wait for night inside. He proceeds at fifty 
feet, and, by 3.6 p.m., has verified his position, coming 
up to twenty-one feet to do so. He goes down again to 
fifty feet, and alters course to pass through the northern 
narrows. At 4.10 p.m. he is east of Helsingor Light — 
' By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore ! ' At 5.20, 
after another observation, he goes to bottom in eleven 
fathoms, feeling comfortably certain that he has not 
been detected — so far — on his passage. 

At 8.15 p.m. he rises to the surface. The Danish 
shore is bright with many lights, the Swedish shore is 
dark — all is exactly as it may have been a century and 
more ago, when Nelson was there on his way to his 
great battle. E. 8 goes south-westward on the surface, 
altering course to avoid being seen by two destroyers, 
who are going north, along the Danish shore, at a great 
pace. One of them suddenly turns south, but then 
stops, as if in doubt. E. 8 runs on into still more 
dangerous waters ; the lights of Copenhagen are blazing 
brightly, and in Middle Ground Fort a searchlight is 
working. Now and again it strikes the submarine. 
Then come several fishing-boats, then two red lights 
in a small craft going south, close over to the Danish 
shore. She is on our starboard beam for some, time, 
but luckily not near enough to see us, and we head 
boldly for Flint Channel. 

Off Malmo, the shore lights are dazzling, and it is 
extremely hard to fix a position. There are many fish- 
ing-boats about, each carrying two bright lights. The 
Commander orders the boat to be trimmed down, with 
upper deck awash, and proceeds with one engine only, 



112 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

at seven knots. He steadies his course through Flint 
Channel, passing at least twenty vessels towards the 
western end of it, some carrying two and some three 
white lights, and one making searchlight signals in 
the air. The majority of the fishing-boats are no sooner 
avoided by a change of course, than we run past a small 
tramp showing a green light, and then three white ones. 
She seems to have anchored ; but two other vessels 
have to be dodged, and then the ship which has been 
signalling with searchlight. Immediately afterwards, 
when just N.E. of the Lightship, with her three vertical 
red lights, a small torpedo-boat or trawler sights us as 
we creep by within 200 yards of her. Probably it is 
the searchlight in Copenhagen which has shown us up. 
Anyhow it is tally-ho at last ! 

She lights red and green flares, and alters course in 
our direction. We dive, and strike bottom — ' very 
strong bottom ' — at nineteen feet on gauge, which imme- 
diately decreases to fourteen feet* At fourteen feet, 
then, we try to proceed on our course ; but the ground 
is fearfully uneven, and a succession of bumps brings 
us to a dead stop. It is 11.40 p.m. After an anxious 
quarter of an hour, the Commander rises to the surface. 
The Drogden Lightship is on our starboard quarter. A 
large destroyer or small cruiser is ahead of us, showing 
lights — she is the one who had made searchlight signals. 
She is only two hundred yards away, but the Commander 
trims E. 8 deep, and steals past on motors. Four minutes 
this takes, and we then find a destroyer right ahead, and 
only one hundred yards from us. There is nothing 
for it but to dive. Down we go to twenty-three feet 
on gauge ; but at sixteen feet the boat strikes bottom 
heavily on the starboard side, carrying away all blades 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 113 

of the starboard propeller. We lie on the bottom and 
listen to our pursuers overhead. 

Life is now a matter of minutes and feet. At 12.15, 
the boat goes down to eighteen feet, but is still bumping 
badly. At 12.19, Commander Goodhart stops her and 
comes silently to the surface. The destroyer is there, 
close on our starboard beam. At 12.20, we dive again, 
as' slowly as we dare, and at seventeen feet we glide 
away on our course, the depth of water mercifully 
increasing as we go. For a long time we seem to be 
escaping. Then, at 2.10 a.m., we strike bottom again 
at eighteen feet. An hour more, and we rise to the 
surface, only to see the destroyer on our port beam. 
Happily she is now a mile off, and does not see us. When 
we come up again, at 7.15, there is nothing in sight. 
At 8.53 we dive for a steamer, and at 10.40 for a de- 
stroyer. E. 8 is nearly out of breath now — her battery 
is running very low. 

Commander Goodhart decides to find a good depth, 
go to the bottom, and lie there till darkness gives him 
a chance of recharging. From 10.40 a.m. till 6.40 p.m. 
we lie like a stone in twenty-three fathoms. 

At 6.40 a Swedish steamer is still patrolling ahead. 
At 8.25 p.m. a patrol of three vessels is close astern, and 
very slowly moving east. The moon is too bright for 
us and we dive again. At 9.30 we try once more, but 
are put down by a shadowy destroyer to the south- 
ward. At last, ten minutes before midnight, we find 
a bit of sea where we and the boat can breathe in 
peace. 

But only for two hours ; daylight comes early in 
northern waters. It is now August 20. At 2.0 a.m. we 
dive again, and lie in seventeen fathoms, spending 



114 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

time and imagination upon the chart. We are well 
out of the Sound now, and clear of the Swedish coast. 
On our starboard beam lies the island of Rugen, where 
we shall never make holiday again ; further back, on 
our quarter, is the channel that leads to Liibeck and 
to Kiel, which we hope to visit yet. Right ahead is the 
island of Bornholm, which we must pass unperceived, 
and beyond it the whole expanse of the Baltic lies 
open. 

Commander Goodhart rises to the surface at 9.0 a.m., 
but dives again at noon. We are now not far west 
of Ronne ; and as he wishes to make sure of passing 
Bornholm unobserved, he decides to remain on the 
bottom till dark, then slip by and recharge his batteries, 
for a long run north by daylight. By 7.0 p.m. we are 
on our way, and eight hours later we are passing the 
east coast of the great island of Gotland. At 9.2 p.m. 
we dive for a light cruiser, which passes overhead 
forward ; at 10.0 we return to the surface and proceed 
north-east, running past the entrance to the Gulf of 
Riga and the island of Oesel. By 1.0 a.m. on August 22, 
we have to dive for daylight ; but by 3.0 we are up 
again, and going on our course full speed. At 8.30 
a.m. we sight Dagerort ahead and join E. 9 (Commander 
Max Horton). In company with her and with a Russian 
destroyer, we pass into the entrance of the Gulf of 
Finland ; and by 9.0 p.m., E. 8 is secured in Reval 
harbour. Within twenty-four hours, Commander 
Goodhart has docked ana overhauled her, replaced 
her broken propeller, and reported her ready for 
sea. 

The career of E. 8 ir the Baltic was long and success- 
ful. It began, so far as sinkings are concerned, with the 



I 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 115 

destruction of the steamer Margarette of Konigsberg by 
gunfire, on October 5, 1915, and the most exciting day 
in the record was October 23, when the Prinz Adalbert, 
a cruiser of nearly 9,000 tons, fell to her first shot. E. 8 
was cruising off Libau when, at 8.50 a.m., Commander 
Goodhart observed smoke on the horizon, and altered 
course to intercept the ship which was soon seen to 
be an enemy. She had three funnels and two very 
high masts, and was going west with two destroyers, 
zigzagging — one on each bow. 

Commander Goodhart ran on, at seven and a half 
knots, till he got within 3,000 yards, when he eased to 
five knots in order to lessen his wake. The wind was 
slight, from S.S.E., and there was bright sunlight. 
The conditions were ideal for an attack from the 
southward. All tubes were made ready ; the enemy 
came on at an estimated speed of fifteen knots. At 
9.28 the port destroyer passed ahead ; four minutes 
later, Commander Goodhart fired his bow tube at 
the war-ship's fore-bridge and began to look out for 
results. 

They came. After one minute he observed a very 
vivid flash on the water-line at the point of aim. This 
was immediately followed by a very heavy concussion, 
and the entire ship was hidden instantly in a huge column 
of thick grey smoke. Evidently the torpedo had 
exploded the fore magazine. The sky was filled with 
debris, and the smaller bits began falling in the water 
near the submarine. There was no use in spending 
time on the surface, and in one minute more, E. 8 was 
sliding down to fifty feet, where she stayed for eight 
minutes, to give the rest of the ship ample time to come 
down. At 9.42 Commander Goodhart rose to twenty 



116 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

feet, and took a survey through his periscope. There 
was no sign of the Prinz Adalbert, The two destroyers 
had closed on to the scene of the explosion, but it was 
not likely that they had been able to find any survivors, 
for the destruction of the ship had been instantaneous 
and complete. Commander Goodhart decided not to 
attack them, because, for all he knew, they were ignorant 
of his presence ; if so, they might very probably imagine 
the damage to have been done by a mine, and give him 
future opportunities. The shot had been a long one, 
about 1,300 yards, and this was in the circumstances 
particularly fortunate ; for at a shorter distance, such 
as 500 or 600 yards, the submarine herself would have 
felt a tremendous shock from the double explosion. 

An hour later he saw four destroyers hovering about 
the place of the wreck. He turned away, and they made 
no attempt to follow. At dawn next day he reported 
by wireless, and then proceeded to his base. 

In the meantime E. 19, Lieut. -Commander F» N. 
Cromie, had arrived. She set to work in earnest upon 
the German shipping engaged in the service of the naval 
and military departments of the enemy, towards the 
western end of the Baltic. Monday, October 11, was 
her best day, and the beginning of a downright panic 
in the Hamburg trade. ' 8.0 a.m.,' says Lieut.-Com- 
mander Cromie, ' started to chase merchant shipping.' 
He had good hunting. At 9.40 a.m. he stopped the 
Walter Leonhardt, from Lulea to Hamburg, with iron 
ore. The crew abandoned ship, and were picked up 
by a Swedish steamer, considerately stopped for the 
purpose. A gun-cotton charge then sent the empty 
vessel to the bottom. By noon, E. 19 was chasing the 
Germania of Hamburg, signalling her to stop immediately. 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC .117 

In spite of the signals and a warning gun-shot, she 
continued to bolt, and soon ran ashore. Lieut. -Comman- 
der Cromie went alongside cautiously to save her crew, 
but found that they had already abandoned ship. He 
tried to tow her off, but failed to move her — small 
wonder, for her cargo consisted of nearly three million 
kgs. of the finest concentrated iron ore, from Stockholm 
to Stettin. He left her filling with water, and at 2.0 
gave chase to the Gutrune. By 3.0 he had towed her 
crew to the Swedish steamer, and started her for the 
bottom with her 4,500,000 kgs. of iron ore, from Lulea 
to Hamburg. 

The game went forward merrily. At 4.25 he began 
to chase two more large steamers going south. In twenty 
minutes he had stopped one — the Swedish boat Nyland, 
with ore for Rotterdam and papers all correct — told 
her to proceed, and ten minutes later caught the Direktor 
Rippenhagen, with magnetic ore from Stockholm to 
Nadenheim. While she was sinking he stopped another 
Swede bound for Newcastle, and gave her the Direktor' s 
crew to take care of. An hour later, he proceeded to 
chase a large steamer, the Nicomedia, who tried to make 
off towards the Swedish coast. A shot across her bows 
brought her to a more resigned frame of mind. She 
proved to be a large and extremely well-fitted vessel, 
carrying six to seven million kgs. of magnetic ore from 
Lulea to Hamburg. The crew were sent ashore in boats, 
and E. 19 proceeded up the west of Gotland. Her cruise 
was marked by one more incident — a significant one. 
During the morning of October 12, Lieut. -Commander 
Cromie stopped the Nike, and went alongside to examine 
her. He found her to be in iron ore from Stockholm 
to Stettin, under command of Captain Anderson, 



118 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

whose passport, from the Liverpool Police, proved him 
to be a Swede. To a Hun, this would have made no 
difference ; but Lieut. -Commander Cromie had British 
ideas on international law. He sent Lieutenant Mee 
on board with a prize crew of two men, in the good old 
style of our ancestors, and ordered them to take the 
prize into Reval for further investigation. After what 
we have already said about submarines and war policy, 
the point needs no pressing. War against trading vessels 
and non-combatants is possible within the rules, but 
only in certain circumstances. Even where those circum- 
stances exist, there is no excuse for breaking the rules ; 
and where they do not exist, only a barbarian would 
hack his way through the net of international law 
and common humanity. Our Navy has in all circum- 
stances kept both these laws : the German submarines 
have deliberately and cruelly broken both. 

Lieut.-Commander Cromie continued to have the 
good fortune he deserved. He ended the 1915 campaign 
with another war-ship in his bag. Cruising in the 
Western Baltic on the morning of November 7, he 
sighted a light cruiser and two destroyers, but was dis- 
appointed in his attempt to attack. Three hours later, 
at 1.20, in a favourable mistv he had a second chance. A 
light cruiser — perhaps the same— with one destroyer 
in attendance, came on at fifteen knots, steaming south 
and east. He dived at once, and at 1.45 fired his star- 
board torpedo. The range was about 1,100 yards, and 
the shot went home on the cruiser's starboard side 
forward. She immediately swung round in a large 
circle and then stopped dead. She appeared to be on 
fire and sinking, But Lieut.-Commander Cromie was 
unwilling to leave her in uncertainty. He avoided the 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 119 

destroyer, passed under her stern, and manoeuvred 
for a second shot. This was fired at 1,200 yards, and 
was aimed at the cruiser's main-mast, just abaft of 
which it actually struck. A double explosion followed. 
Evidently the after magazine had blown up, and several 
large smoking masses were shot out some 200 yards 
in the direction of the submarine. The destroyer then 
opened a heavy fire on the periscope with H.E. shell. 
Down went E. 19 for her life ; but three minutes 
later, she was up again to see what was happening. 
The cruiser — she was the Undine of 2,650 tons — was 
gone. The destroyer was picking up a few survivors, 
and after a restless half -hour made off to the southward, 
leaving on the scene only a ferry-boat flying the German 
mercantile flag. Lieut.-Commander Cromie left also, 
and arrived next day at Reval, where he reported the 
attack and added that, under existing weathgr condi- 
tions, it was only rendered possible by the sound judg- 
ment and prompt action of Lieutenant G. Sharp, who 
was officer of the watch at the time. 

E. 19 was not alone in her successful campaign 
against the German iron-ore trade. A week after her 
fine break recorded above, E. 9 arrived on the scene ; 
and Commander Max Horton, in two successive days, 
sank the Soderham, Pernambuco, Johannes-Russ, and 
Dall-Asfen — four serious losses to the German gun 
factories, and even more serious blows to the courage 
of their carrying trade. The captain of the Nike told 
Lieutenant Mee on his voyage to Reval, that after E. 19's 
first raid no less than fifteen ships were held up at Lulea, 
awaiting convoys ; and after E. 9's success, the command 
of the Baltic seemed to have passed for the time out 
of German hands. 



120 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Such a state of things could not, of course, be con- 
tinuously maintained — the Baltic weather alone made 
that impossible, E. 1, E. 8, and E. 18 followed their 
leaders, and all did good service during the autumn ; 
but their reports show how severe were the conditions 
when the winter really set in. E. 9 had already noted 
very bad weather in November, and on the 25th ' boat 
became covered with a large quantity of ice.' On 
January 10, 1916, E. 18, commanded by Lieut.-Com- 
mander R. C. Halahan, reports ' temperature very low : 
sea very rough; great difficulty in keeping conning - 
tower hatch clear of ice, as sea came over constantly 
and froze at once.' Two days later she proceeded to 
Reval in company with a Russian ice-breaker. ' The 
ice was very thick in places, but no difficulty was 
experienced in getting through.' These hindrances 
continued for months. As late as April 28, we find 
E. 18 accompanied through Moon Sound by an 
ice-breaker ' as there were occasional thick ice-fields.' 
The next day some of these ice-fields came drifting 
down upon the anchorage, and E. 18 had to slip and 
anchor off until night. Even so* she could not be sure 
of escaping all danger ; for the ice brought down 
large masses of stone, and deposited them in the 
channels. 

In spite of all difficulties and hardships, our sub- 
marines continued their campaign indomitably, and 
would no doubt at this hour still hold the mastery of 
the Baltic trade, if the collapse of our Russian friends 
had not deprived them of their bases and rendered 
their operations useless. Early in April, 1917, it 
became evident that Finland must fall into German 
hands, and steps were taken to withdraw our naval 




* The Russian ioe-brea,kers freed them from the harbour ice.' 

[Seepage J 2 3. 



SUBMARINES IN THE BALTIC 123 

force from the Baltic. But, for the boats themselves, 
there could be no return from the scene of their voyages 
and victories. They lay ice-bound in the harbour of 
Helsingfors, and there they must end their unparalleled 
story, for surrender to an enemy so unworthy was not 
to be thought of. 

As soon, then; as official news came of the landing 
of German troops at Hango, these famous adventurers 
were led to their last rendezvous. The Russian ice- 
breakers freed them from the harbour ice. All the 
Russian officers who had been attached to the British 
flotilla, and who were then in Helsingfors, offered their 
assistance for the funeral rites, and soon after midday 
Lieut. Basil Downie, the officer in command of the sub- 
marine depot, put to sea in E. 1, followed by E. 9, E. 8, 
and E. 19. Each boat carried her death potion in the 
form of torpedo warheads with a 20-lb. dry cotton charge 
as primers. Three of these charges were allotted to 
each— one forward, one aft, and one amidships; and 
when the alarm-bell of the clock in each should ring, 
contact would be made and the end would come. The 
point decided on was reached at last. The bells rang, 
and E. 19, E. 1, and E. 9 sank to their own thunder. 
E. 8, by some failure of her clock, remained unhurt, and 
since the ice-breaker could not stay out at sea longer, 
she was left to die another day, with other comrades. 
At 7.0 next morning, Lieut. Downie put to sea again 
with C. 26 and C. 35 and the torpedo-barge, with the 
few remaining stores. When the clocks rang this time, 
E. 8 sank, and C. 26 with her. The barge and C. 35 were 
left to wait for C. 27, the last of that victorious company. 
On the following morning the barge was blown up, 
and the two submarines were simply sunk in fifteen 



124 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

fathoms. They went down uninjured, but within three 
minutes two great explosions followed, an£ twelve-foot 
columns of water shot up. c This, presumably,' says 
the report, * was the exploding of their batteries.' Our 
Viking ancestors would have said, perhaps, that it 
was the bursting of their dragon hearts. 



CHAPTER IX 

BRITISH SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 

Our submarine campaign in the Sea of Marmora must 
also have a separate chapter to itself, not only because 
it is now a closed episode in the history of the War, 
but because it was conducted under quite unique 
conditions. The scene of operations was not merely 
distant from the submarine base, it was divided from 
it by an approach of unusual danger and difficulty. 
The channel of the Dardanelles is narrow and winding, 
with a strong tide perpetually racing down it, and 
setting strongly into the several bays. It was more- 
over protected, as will appear in the course of the 
narrative, by forts with powerful guns and search- 
lights and torpedo tubes, and by barrages of thick 
wire and netting it was also patrolled constantly by 
armed ships. Yet from the very first all these defences 
were evaded or broken through with marvellous courage 
and ingenuity ; for nearly a year a succession of brilliant 
commanders took their boats regularly up and down 
the passage, and made the transport of Turkish troops 
and munitions across the Marmora first hazardous, 
and finally impracticable. Their losses were small ; 
but they passed the weeks of their incredibly long 
patrols in continual danger, and snatched their successes 
from the midst of a swarm of vigilant enemies. Two 

125 



126 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

battle-ships, a destroyer, and five gunboats fell to them, 
besides over thirty steamers, many of which were 
armed, nine transports, seven ammunition and store 
ships, and no less than 188 sailing ships and dhows 
with supplies. The pages which follow contain notes 
on the cruise of every British boat which attempted 
the passage of the Straits ; but they are far from 
giving an account of all their amazing feats and 
adventures. 

Lieutenant Norman Holbrook h,ad the honour of 
being the first officer to take a British submarine up 
the Dardanelles. He carefully prepared his boat— 
B. 11 — for the business of jumping over and under 
obstacles, by devices which have since been perfected 
but were then experimental. The preliminary trials 
turned out very satisfactorily, and on Sunday, Decem- 
ber 13, 1914, as soon as the mainland searchlights 
were extinguished at dawn, he trimmed and dived for 
Seddul Bahr. 

His main idea was to put certain Rickmers steamers 
out of action, and perhaps the actual object of his 
pursuit was the Lily Rickmers. He did not get her, 
but he got something quite as attractive. It was 
9.40 a.m., or rather more than four hours from the 
start, when at last he put his periscope above water, 
and saw immediately on his starboard beam a large 
two-funnelled vessel, painted grey and flying the 
Turkish ensign. At 600 yards he fired his starboard 
torpedo, put his helm hard a-starboard, and dipped 
to avoid remonstrances. The explosion was duly 
audible a few seconds later, and as B. 11 came quietly 
up of her own motion her commander took a glimpse 
through the periscope. The grey ship (she was the 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 127 

haXtle-shipMessudiyeh) was still on his starboard beam, 
and firing a number of guns. B. 11 seemed bent on 
dipping again, but Lieutenant Holbrook was still 
more bent on seeing what he had done. He got her up 
once more and sighted his enemy, on the port bow 
this time. She was settling down by the stern and her 
guns were no longer firing. 

At this moment the man at the helm of B. 11 re- 
ported that the lenses of the compass had become 
fogged, and the instrument was for the time unreadable. 
Lieutenant Holbrook took a careful survey of his 
surroundings, calculated that he was in Sari Siglar 
Bay, and dived for the channel. The boat touched 
bottom and for ten minutes went hop, skip and jump 
along it, at full speed, until she shot off into deeper 
water. Her commander then brought her up again, 
took a sight of the European shore, steadied her by 
it, and ran for home. By 2 p.m. he had cleared the 
entrance. His feat was not only brilliant in itself ; it 
was an act of leadership, an invaluable reconnaissance. 
In ten hours he had proved all the possibilities of the 
situation — he had forced a strongly guarded channel, 
surprised and sunk a battle-ship in broad daylight, 
and returned safely, though he had gone up without 
information and come down without a compass. The 
V.C. was his manifest destiny. 

In the following spring, after the guns of the Allied 
fleets had failed to reduce the Turkish forts, the sub- 
marine campaign was developed. It began with a 
defeat — one of those defeats which turn to honour, 
and maintain the invincibility of our Service. On 
April 17, while attempting a difficult reconnaissance 
of the Kephez minefield, E. 15 ran ashore in the Dar- 



128 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

danelles within a few hundred yards of Fort No. 8. 
Her crew were captured while trying to get her off, 
and there was a danger of her falling into the enemy's 
hands in a serviceable condition. The only remedy 
was to blow her up. She was no sort of a mark for 
the battle-ships at long range ; so during the night of 
the 18th an attack was made by two picket boats, 
manned by volunteer crews. The boat of H.M.S. 
Triumph was commanded by Lieut.-Commander Eric 
Robinson, who led the expedition, with Lieut. Arthur 
Brooke Webb, R.N.R., and Midshipman John Woolley, 
and that of H.M.S. Majestic by Lieut. Claud Godwin. 
The fort gave them over two hundred rounds at 
short range, mortally wounded one man and sank the 
Majesties boat ; but Lieut.-Commander Robinson suc- 
ceeded in torpedoing E. 15 and rendering her useless. 
He brought both crews off, and left even the Germans 
in Constantinople admiring the pluck of his little 
enterprise. One officer is reported by Mr. Lewis 
Einstein, of the American Embassy there, 1 to have 
said, ' I take off my hat to the British Navy.' He 
was right — this midnight attack by a handful of boys 
in boats has all the heroic romance of the old cutting- 
out expeditions, and on Admiral de Robeck's report 
the leader of it was promoted to commander. 

On April 25, A.E. 2 went successfully up and entered 
the Sea of Marmora ; on the 29th, Lieut.-Commander 
Edward Courtney Boyle followed in E. 14. He started 
at 1.40 a.m., and the searchlight at Suan Dere was still 
working when he arrived there at 4 o'clock. The fort 
fired, and he dived, passing clean under the minefield. 

1 Inside Constantinople, p. 3. This interesting book throws much light 
on our submarine campaign, and gives valuable confirmation of our 
records. 




The Fort gave them 200 rounds at short range.' 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 131 

He then passed Chanak on the surface with all the 
forts firing at him. Further on there were a lot of small 
ships patrolling, and a torpedo gunboat at which he 
promptly took a shot. The torpedo got her on the 
quarter and threw up a column of water as high as her 
mast. But Lieut. -Commander Boyle could not stop 
to see more — he became aware that the men in a small 
steamboat were leaning over and trying to catch hold 
of the top of his periscope. He dipped and left them ; 
then rounded Nagara Point and dived deep. Again 
and again he came up and was driven down ; destroyers 
and gunboats were chasing and firing in all directions. 
It was all he could do to charge his batteries at night. 
After running continuously for over fifty hours, the 
motors were so hot that he was obliged to stop. The 
steadiness of all on board may be judged from the 
record of the diving necessary to avoid destruction. 
Out of the first sixty-four hours of the voyage, the 
boat was kept under for forty-four hours and fifty 
minutes. 

On the afternoon of the 29th, he sighted three de- 
stroyers convoying two troopships ; fired and dipped 
— for the destroyers were blazing at his periscope, and 
he had only that one left-— the other had stopped a 
shot the day before. But even down below a thud 
was audible, and the depth gauges flicked ten feet ; half 
an hour afterwards he saw through the periscope his 
own particular transport, making for the shore with 
dense columns of yellow smoke pouring from her. 
And that was her last appearance. A few hours later 
he sighted A.E. 2 and spoke her. She had sunk one 
gunboat, but had had bad luck with her other torpe- 
does and had only one left. Lieut. -Commander Boyle 



132 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

arranged to meet her again next day ; but next day 
the gallant A.E. 2 fell to a Turkish gunboat. 

During these days the Sea of Marmora was glassy 
calm, and the patrol ships were so troublesome that 
Lieut. -Commander Boyle decided to sink one as a 
deterrent. He picked off a small mine-laying boat, and 
fired at a larger one twice without success, as the wake 
of the torpedoes was too easily seen in the clear water. 

The first four days of May he spent mainly in being 
hunted. On the 5th, he got a shot at a destroyer 
convoying a transport, and made a fine right-angle 
hit at 600 yards, but the torpedo failed to explode. 
This only whetted his appetite, and for three days he 
chased ship after ship. One he followed inshore, but 
troops on board opened fire on him and hit the boat 
several times. At last, on the evening of May 10, after 
being driven down by one destroyer, he sighted another 
with two transports, and attacked at once. His 
first torpedo missed the leading transport ; his second 
shot hit the second transport and a terrific explosion 
followed. Debris and men were seen falling into the 
water ; then night came on rapidly, and he could not 
mark the exact moment at which she sank. 

Inside Constantinople they were already telling 
each other yarns about E. 14, and for her incredible 
activity they even promoted her to the plural number. 
4 One of the English submarines in the Marmora,' 
Mr. Einstein wrote on May 11, 'is said to have called 
at Rodosto, flying the Turkish flag. The Kaimakam, 
believing the oificers to be German, gave them all the 
petrol and provisions they required, and it was only after 
leaving that they hoisted their true colours.' The 
story will not bear examination - v from our side ; but 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 133 

no doubt it very usefully covered a deficiency in the 
Kaimakam's store account, whether caused by Germans 
or by the Faithful themselves. 

On May 13, Lieut. -Commander Boyle records a rifle 
duel with a small steamer which he had chased ashore 
near Panidos, On the 14th he remarks the enemy's 
growing shyness. ' I think the Turkish torpedo-boats 
must have been frightened of ramming us, as several 
times, when I tried to remain on the surface at night, 
they were so close when sighted that it must have been 
possible to get us if they had so desired.' The air 
was so clear that in the daytime he was almost always 
in sight from the shore, and signal fires and smoke 
columns passed the alarm continually. He had no 
torpedoes left and was not mounted with a gun, so 
that he was now at the end of his tether. On the 17th 
he was recalled by wireless, and after diving all night 
ran for Gallipoli at full speed, pursued by a two-funnelled 
gunboat, a torpedo-boat and a tug, who shepherded him 
one on each side and one astern, ' evidently expecting,' 
he thought, ' to get me caught in the nets.' But he 
adds, ' did not notice any nets,' and after passing another 
two-funnelled gunboat, a large yacht, a battle-ship and 
a number of tramps, the fire of the Chanak forts and 
the minefield as before, he reached the entrance and 
rose to the surface abeam of a French battle-ship of the 
St. Louis class, who gave her fellow crusader a rousing 
cheer. Commander Boyle reported that the success 
of this fine and sustained effort was mainly due to 
his officers, Lieutenant Edward Stanley and Acting- 
Lieutenant Lawrence, R.N.R., both of whom received 
the D.S.C. His own promotion to Commander was 
underlined by the award of the V.C. 



134 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Within twelve hours of E. 14's return, her successor, 
E. 11, was proceeding towards the Straits. The com- 
manding officer of this boat was Lieut. -Commander 
M. E. Nasmith, who had already been mentioned in 
despatches for rescuing five airmen while being attacked 
by a Zeppelin in the Heligoland Bight during the action 
on Christmas Day, 1914. He had been waiting his 
turn at the Dardanelles with some impatience, and as 
E. 11 's port engine had been put completely out of 
action by an accident on the voyage from Malta, he 
had begged to be allowed to attempt the passage into 
the Marmora under one engine. This was refused, 
but his repairs were finished in time for him to take the 
place of E. 14. 

He made the passage of the Straits successfully, 
reconnoitred the Marmora and made a neat arrangement, 
probably suggested by the adventures of E. 14, for 
saving the enemy the trouble of so much hunting. He 
stopped a small coastal sailing vessel, sent Lieut. D'Oyly 
Hughes to search her for contraband, and then trimmed 
well down and made her fast alongside his conning- 
tower. Being now quite invisible from the eastward, 
he was able to proceed in that direction all day without 
interruption. At night he released his stalking-horse 
and returned westward. 

Early on the 23rd, he observed a Turkish torpedo- 
boat at anchor off Constantinople and sank her with 
a torpedo ; but as she sank she fired a 6-pounder gun, 
the first shot of which damaged his foremost periscope. 
He came up for repairs, and all hands took the chance 
of a bathe. Five hours later he stopped a small steamer, 
whose crew did a 'panic abandon ship,' capsizing all 
boats but one. ' An American gentleman then appeared 




Made her fast alongside his conning-tower. 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 137 

on the upper deck, who informed us that his name was 
Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun and that he was 
pleased to make our acquaintance. . . . He wasn't sure 
if there were any stores on board.' Lieut. D'Oyly 
Hughes looked into the matter and discovered a 6-inch 
gun lashed across the top of the fore hatch, and other 
gun- mountings in the hold, which was also crammed 
with 6-inch and other ammunition marked Krupp. A 
demolition charge sent ship and cargo to the bottom. 

Lieut. -Commander Nasmith then chased and tor- 
pedoed a heavily laden store-ship, and drove another 
ashore, exchanging rifle fire with a party of horsemen 
on the cliff above. Altogether the day was a lively one, 
and the news, brought by Mr. Silas Q. Swing and his 
friends, shook Constantinople up severely. Mr. Einstein 
records that ' the submarine came up at 20 minutes to 
2 o'clock, about three hundred yards from where the 
American guardship Scorpion lay moored, and was 
immediately fired at by the shore batteries. It shot off 
two torpedoes ; the first missed a transport by about 
fifty yards, the second struck the Stamboul fair, passing 
under a barge moored alongside, which blew up. The 
Stamboul had a gap of twenty feet on her water-line 
•but did not sink. She was promptly towed toward 
Beshiktash to lie on the bottom in shallow water. The 
submarine meanwhile, under a perfect hail of fire, 
which passed uncomfortably close to the Scorpion, dived 
and got away, steering up the Bosphorus. At Galata 
there was a panic, everyone closing their shops; the 
troops, who were already on two transports, were 
promptly disembarked, but later re-embarked, and 
still later landed once more. The total damage was 
inconsiderable, but the moral effect was very real.' 



138 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

On the following day he adds, ' S.' (Swing, no doubt — 
Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun) ( came in with an 
exciting tale. On his way to the Dardanelles the steamer, 
which carried munitions and a 6-inch gun, had been 
torpedoed by an English submarine, the E. 11. They 
allowed the crew to leave, and then sank the ship. 
The English officer told him there were eleven sub- 
marines in the Marmora, and these are holding up all 
the ships going to the Dardanelles. They had sunk 
three transports full of troops, out of four which had 
been sunk, and various other vessels, but do not touch 
those carrying wounded.' 

So, between Lieut. D'Oyly Hughes and Mr. Silas 
Q. Swing, the E. 11 became eleven submarines, and 
may go down the ages like the eleven thousand virgins of 
Cologne. Her commander evidently hoped to create 
a panic, and Mr. Einstein leaves us no doubt that the 
plan succeeded to the full. On May 27 he writes again : 
' The Marmora is practically closed by English sub- 
marines. Everyone asks where their depot is, and 
how they are refurnished.' May 28 : * The submarines 
in the Marmora have frightened the Turks, and all the 
remaining transports, save one, lie tranquilly in the 
Golden Horn. Otherwise I have never seen the port so 
empty. One wonders where the submarines have their 
base, and when and how it was prepared.' He adds, 
with some shrewdness : ' Probably, if at all, in some 
island of the Marmora, though the newer boats can 
stay out a long time.' E. 11 was far from new, as 
we have seen, but she was in hands that could make 
her stand for quality as well as quantity. 

Lieut. -Commander Nasmith brought his boat safely 
back to Mudros on June 7. The last hour of his trip 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 139 

was perhaps the most breathless, for while rushing 
down by Kilid Bahr he found his trim quite abnormal, 
and ' observed a large mine preceding the periscope at 
a distance of about twenty feet ; which was apparently 
hung up by its moorings to the port hydroplane.' He 
could not come to the surface, as the shore batteries 
were waiting for him ; but when outside Kum Kale, he 
emptied his after-tanks, got his nose down, and went 
full speed astern, dropping the mine neatly to the 
bottom. This was good work, but not better than 
the skill shown in navigating shoal water, or ; the 
resource displayed in the delicate operation of recover- 
ing two torpedoes ' without the usual derrick to hoist 
them in — an operation which may as well remain for 
the present undescribed. Admiral de Robeck, in 
recommending Lieut. -C^mmande^ Na smith for the 
V.C., speaks of his cruise as one 'which will 
surely find a place in the annals of the British Navy.' 
It will — there can be no forgetting it. The very log 
of E. 11 deserves to be a classic. ' Having dived 
unobserved into Constantinople . . .,' says her Com- 
mander soberly, and so, without a thought of it, adds 
one to the historic despatches of the Service. 

It was now E. 14's turn again. Commander Court- 
ney Boyle took her up on June 10, against a very 
strong tide. At 9 o'clock next morning he stopped 
a brigantine, whose crew abandoned ship ' and then 
all stood up and cursed us. It was too rough to go 
alongside her, so Acting-Lieut. R. W. Lawrence, R.N.R., 
swam off to her, climbed aboard, and ... set fire to 
her with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil.' 
On the 12th one of the Rickmers steamers was torpedoed. 
Shortly afterwards there was a big explosion close to 



140 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the submarine. ' And I think,' says her commander, 
' I must have caught the moorings of a mine with ray 
tail as I was turning, and exploded it. . . . The whole 
boat was very badly shaken.' But Lily Rickmers and 
her sister were now both removed from the Turkish 
service, for E. 11 had evidently accounted for one of 
them already. Mr. Einstein writes on June 13 : ' The 
German Embassy approached us to cable Washington 
to protest about the torpedoing without warning of 
the two Rickmers steamers in the Marmora. One of 
these was said to be filled with wounded, but their 
note neglected to say that these had been discharged 
from hospital and were on their way back to the Dar- 
danelles.' Only a German diplomatist could speak of 
a ship carrying troops to the front as ' filled with 
wounded ' ; and Mr. Einstein adds, ' One cannot but 
be struck by the German inability to understand our 
position over the Lusitania.' The point is plain, and 
goes deep. To the modern German mind all such con- 
siderations are only a matter of words, useful for argu- 
mentative purposes — that there should be any truth 
of reality or feeling behind them is not imaginable. 

The rest of this log is a record of destruction, but 
destruction on thoroughly un-German methods. * June 
20. — Boarded and sank 3 sailing dhows . . . towed the 
crew inshore and gave them some biscuit, beef, rum, 
and water, as they were rather wet.' ' June 22. — Let 
go passenger ship.' 23. — 4 Burnt two-master, and started 
to tow crew in their boat, but had to dive. Stopped 
two dhows : they were both empty and the crews looked 
so miserable that I only sunk one and let the other go.' 
24. — * Blew up 2 large dhows : there was another one 
about a mile off with no boat . . . and thought I saw 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 141 

two heads in the water. Turned round and found that 
there were 2 men in the water at least half a mile from 
their dhow. Picked them up : they were quite ex- 
hausted : gave them food and drink, and put them on 
board their ship. They had evidently seen the other 
two dhows blown up and were frightened out of their 
wits.' There is nothing here to boast about — to us, 
nothing surprising. But it brings to mind inevitably 
the evidence upon which our enemies stand convicted. 
We remember the long roll of men and women not only 
set adrift in stormy seas, but shot and drowned in 
their open boats without pity and without cause. We 
admit the courage of the Hun, but we cannot admire 
it. It is too near to animal ferocity, and stained with 
a cruelty and callousness which are not even beast -like. 

On June 21, Commander Boyle had rendezvoused 
with E. 12, Lieut. -Commander K. M. Bruce. ' I got 
her alongside, and we remained tied up for 3 hours.' 
From this time onward the reliefs were arranged to 
overlap, so that there were nearly always two boats 
operating at the same time in the Marmora. Lieut. - 
Commander Bruce came up on June 19, and found, 
like others, that the chief dilficulty of forcing the passage 
was the heating of the main motors on so long and 
strenuous a run. 

The one great day of his nine days' patrol was 
June 25, when he brought off a hand-to-hand fight on 
the surface with three enemy ships. At 10.45 in the 
morning he sighted, in the Gulf of Mudania, a small 
two-decked passenger steamer. ' She looked,' he says, 
6 rather like a tram-car, and was towing two sailing- 
vessels. In the distance was a sister of hers, towing 
three more.' He chased, and soon stopped the nearer 



142 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

steamer. He could see, as he steamed round her, that 
she was carrying a lot of stores. She had no boat, and 
all the crew appeared to be on deck in lifebelts. He 
could see no sign of guns, so he ran his bow up alongside 
and sent his first lieutenant, Tristram Fox, to board 
her. But guns are not the only risk a submarine has 
to take on such occasions. As the boarding party 
stepped on board the steamer, a Turk heaved a bomb 
over the side. It hit E. 12 forward, but did not explode, 
and no second one followed. The Turks, however, meant 
fighting, and they opened fire with rifles and a small 
gun, concealed somewhere aft. The situation was a 
very anxious one, especially for Lieutenant Fox and 
his boarding party ; for they knew their own ship must 
open fire in return, and it was difficult to take cover on 
an enemy ship in action. Lieut. -Commander Bruce 
was in a very tight corner, but he kept his head and 
played his game without a mistake. He did not 
hesitate to open fire with his 6-pounder, but he began 
upon the enemy's stern, where the gun was concealed, 
and having dealt with that he turned to her other end 
and put ten shots into her from fore to aft. His men 
shot steadily, though under gun and rifle fire at a range 
of only ten yards, and his coxswain, Charles Case, 
who was with him in the conning-tower, passed up the 
ammunition. Spare men, with rifles, kept the Turks' 
heads down, and all seemed to be going well, when the 
two sailing-ships in tow began a new and very plucky 
move of their own. They came in to foul the sub- 
marine's propellers, and at the same time opened fire 
with rifles, taking E. 12 in flank. But by this time the 
steamer was beaten, and the British rifles soon silenced 
those in the sailing-ships. Then, as soon as Lieut.- 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 143 

Commander Bruce had cleared the steamer, he sank 
the three of them. The steamer had probably been 
carrying ammunition as well as stores, for one of the 
shots from the 6 -pounder touched off something ex- 
plosive in her forward part. In fifteen minutes she was 
at the bottom. 

Lieut. -Commander Bruce was already thinking of 
the other steamer with the three sailing-ships in tow. 
She was diligently making for the shore, and he had 
to open fire at her at 2000 yards. As he closed, the fire 
was returned, not only from the ship but from a gun 
on shore ; but by this time he had hit the enemy aft, 
and set her on fire forward. She beached herself, 
and as the three sailing-ships had been slipped and were 
also close under the shore, he had no choice but to 
leave them. E. 12's injuries were miraculously slight — 
her commander's account of them is slighter still. ' I 
was very much hampered,' he says, * in my movements 
and took some minutes to get clear of the first steamer. 
But only one man was hurt, by a splinter from the 
steamer.' This was quite in accordance with the old 
English rule of the gun-decks : to hit and be missed 
there's nothing like closing. The story of this fine 
little scrimmage ends with the special recommendation 
by Lieut.-Commander Bruce of his first lieutenant, 
Tristram Fox, 'who behaved exceedingly well under 
very trying circumstances,' and of his coxswain, Charles 
Case, and three seamen — they all received the Dis- 
tinguished Service Medal. Of the commander himself 
we shall hear again presently. 

E. 12 was recalled on June 28, leaving E. 14 still 
at work ; and on the 30th her place was taken by 
E. 7, Lieut.-Commander Cochrane. On the way up, a 



144 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

torpedo from a tube on shore passed over him, and a 
destroyer made two attempts to ram him, but he got 
safely through and rendezvoused with E. 14 on the 
following evening. His misfortunes began next day, 
when Lieut. Hallifax and an A.B. were badly burned 
by an explosion in the hold of a captured steamer. 
Then dysentery attacked the two remaining officers 
and the telegraphist. Work became very arduous, 
but work was done notwithstanding. Ship after ship 
was sunk — five steamers and sixteen sailing-ships in 
all. One of the steamers was ' a Mahsousie ship, the 
Biga,' of about 3,000 tons. She was lying alongside 
Mudania Pier, with sailing-vessels moored outside 
the pier to protect her. But Lieut. -Commander 
Cochrane saw daylight between this barrage and his 
prey ; he dived under the sailing-ships, and up went 
the Biga with a very heavy explosion. 

On July 17, he tried a new method of harassing the 
Turkish army. He came up opposite Kara Burnu 
and opened fire on the railway cutting west of it, 
blocking the line — then dived, and went on to Derinjie 
Burnu. The shipyard there was closed, but he observed 
a heavy troop train steaming west, towards the block 
he had so carefully established just before. He followed 
up at full speed, and after twenty minutes of anxious hope 
saw the train returning baffled. It eventually stopped 
in a belt of trees at Yarandji Station ; this made 
spotting difficult, but E. 7's gunnery was good enough. 
After twenty rounds the three ammunition cars of the 
train were definitely blown up, and E. 7 could move 
back to Kara Burnu, where she shelled another train 
and hit it several times. 

All this was very disturbing to the Turks, and they 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 145 

tried every means to stop it at the source. They had 
already a net in the channel, but it was quite ineffectual. 
' Now,' says Mr. Einstein on July 15, 'it turns out that 
they have constructed a barrage of network to keep 
out the submarines from the Dardanelles, and this 
explains the removal of the buoys all along the Bos- 
phorus. They need these, and especially their chains, 
to keep it in place.' A week later, Lieut. -Commander 
Cochrane saw these buoys on his way down. They 
were in a long line, painted alternately red and black, 
and stretching from a position a mile north of Maitos 
village to a steamer moored in Nagara Liman. He 
dived under them and went on his way ; but later on, 
below Kilid Bahr, the boat fouled a moorings forward 
and was completely hung up, swinging round, head 
to tide. By admirable management she was got clear 
in half an hour, and then the same thing happened 
again. ' This time,' says her commander coolly, ' I 
think the boat carried the obstruction with her for 
some distance. I was expecting to see something foul 
when we came to the surface, but everything was clear 
then.' What he and his men saw, during those two 
half -hours, might also be described as ' something 
foul.' 

The cruise of E. 7 lasted for over three weeks, from 
June 30 to July 24. On July 21, Commander Courtney 
Boyle brought up E. 14 once more. He, too, saw the 
new net near Nagara, ' a line of what looked like lighters 
half-way across, and one small steamship in the vicinity.' 
But he passed through the gate in it without touching 
anything. This was lucky, as he had already scraped 
against an obstruction off Kilid Bahr and cut his guard 
wire nearly through. Once up, he got to work at 



146 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

once, and in a busy and adventurous three weeks he 
sank one steamer, one supply ship, seven dhows and 
thirteen sailing-vessels. In short, he made himself 
master of the Marmora. The complete interruption 
of the Turkish sea communications was proved by the 
statements of prisoners. The captain of one ship 
stated that Constantinople was full of wounded and 
short of food, and that the troops now all went to 
Rodosto by rail and then marched to Gallipoli— six 
hours in the train and three days and nights marching, 
instead of a short and simple voyage. All the Turkish 
war-ships were above the second bridge in the Golden 
Horn, and they never ventured out. There were no 
steamers going to sea — all supplies to Gallipoli went in 
sailing craft, towed by destroyers under cover of dark- 
ness. It is clear that, to the Turkish imagination, 
E. 14 was like E. 11 — very much in the plural number. 
On August 5, E. 11 herself came on duty again, and the 
two boats met at rendezvous at 2 p.m. next day. Half 
an hour afterwards, Commanders Boyle and Nasmith 
started on their first hunt in couples. Their quarry 
was a gunboat of the Berki-Satvet class. The chase 
was a lively one, and it was E. 11, in the end, who 
made the kill with a torpedo amidships. Then the two 
boats came alongside again and their commanders 
concerted a plan for shelling troops next day. 

They took up their positions in the early morning 
hours, and waited for the game to come past. Com- 
mander Nasmith had been given the better stand of the 
two ; at 11.30 a.m. he observed troops going towards 
Gallipoli, rose to the surface and fired. Several of 
his shots dropped well among them and they scattered. 
In less than an hour another column approached 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 147 

"along the same road. E. 11 had retired, so to speak, 
into her butt ; she now stepped up again, raised her 
gun, and made good shooting as before. ' The column 
took cover in open order.' 

In the meantime Commander Boyle had been diving 
up and down all the morning between Fort Victoria 
and a point four miles up the coast to the east, about 
a mile from shore. Three times he came to the surface, 
but each time the troops turned out to be bullocks. 
At 1.30 p.m. (when he came up for the fourth time) more 
dust was coming down the road, and this time it was 
the right kind of dust. As he opened fire he heard 
E. 11 banging away. She had left the place where he 
had stationed her, to the N.E. of Dohan Asian Bank, 
and had come down to join him in his billet. The two 
boats then conducted a joint action for the best part 
of an hour. Commander Boyle got off forty rounds, 
of which about six burst on the road among the troops, 
and one in a large building. But the distance was 
almost beyond his 6-pounder's reach. He had to put 
the full range on the sights, and then aim at the top 
of the hill, so that his fire was less accurate than 
that of Commander Nasmith with his 12-pounder. E. 11 
had strewed the road with a large number of dead 
and wounded, when guns on shore came into action 
and forced her to dive. She came up again an hour 
and a half later and dispersed the troops afresh, but 
once more had to dive for her life. 

Next day, Commander Boyle ordered E. 11 to 
change billets with him, and both boats had luck, Com- 
mander Boyle destroying a 5,000-ton supply steamer with 
torpedo and gunfire, and Commander Nasmith bagging 
a battle-ship. This last was the Haireddin Barbarossa. 



148 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

She was passing about five miles N.E. of Gallipoli, 
escorted by a destroyer. E. 11 was skilfully brought 
into position on her starboard beam, and the torpedo 
got home amidships. The Barbarossa immediately 
took a list to starboard, altered course towards the 
shore, and opened a heavy fire on the submarine's 
periscope. But she was mortally hit. Within twenty 
minutes a large flash burst from her fore part, and she 
rolled over and sank. To lose their last battleship, 
and so near home, was a severe blow for the Turks, and 
they made every effort to conceal the depressing details. 
Mr. Einstein, however, heard them and makes an 
interesting entry. ' The Barbarossa was sunk in the 
Marmora and not in the Dardanelles, as officially an- 
nounced. She was convoying barges full of munitions 
and also two transports, when she found herself sur- 
rounded by six submarines.' It is creditable to Com- 
mander Nasmith that he did so well with only six of 
his E. 11 flotilla. Einstein continues : ' The transports 
were supposed to protect her, but the second torpedo 
proved effective and she sank in seven minutes. One 
of the transports and a gunboat were also sunk, the 
other ran aground. Of crews of 700, only one-third 
were saved.' And on August 15 he records further 
successes by Commander Nasmith — a large collier, the 
Ispahan, sunk while unloading in the port of Haidar 
Pasha, the submarine creeping up under the lee of 
another boat ; and two transports with supplies, the 
Chios and the Samsoun, sunk in the Marmora. 

Commander Boyle returned to his base on August 12, 
with no further difficulty than a brush against a mine 
and a rough-and-tumble encounter with an electric 
wire obstruction, portions of which he carried away 




She was mortally hit.' 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 151 

tangled round his periscope and propellers. His boat 
had now done over 12,000 miles since leaving England 
and had never been out of running order — a magnifi 
cent performance, reported by her commander to be 
primarily due to the excellence of his chief engine-room 
artificer, James Hollier Hague, who was accordingly 
promoted to warrant rank, as from the date of the 
recommendation. 

E. 14 was succeeded on August 13 by E. 2, Com- 
mander David Stocks, who met Commander Nasmith 
at 2 p.m. next day, and handed over a fresh supply 
of ammunition for E. 11. He also, no doubt, told him 
the story of his voyage up. Off Nagara his boat had 
fouled an obstruction, and through the conning-tower 
scuttles he could see that a 3 |-inch wire was wound with 
a half turn round his gun, a smaller wire round the 
conning-tower itself, and another round the wireless 
standard aft. It took him ten minutes' plunging and 
backing to clear this and regain control ; and during 
those ten minutes, small explosions were heard con- 
tinuously. These were apparently from bombs thrown 
by guard boats ; but a series of loud explosions, a little 
later, were probably from shells fired by a destroyer 
which was following up, and was still overhead an 
hour afterwards. 

The two boats parted again, taking separate beats, 
and spent a week in sinking steamers, boarding hospital 
ships, and bombarding railway stations. When they 
met again on the evening of August 21, Commander 
Nasmith had a new kind of yarn to tell. His lieutenant, 
D'Oyly Hughes, had volunteered to make an attack on 
the Ismid Railway, and a whole day had been spent 
behind Kalolimno Island in constructing a raft capable 



152 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

of carrying one man and a demolition charge of gun- 
cotton. Then the raft had been tested by a bathing 
party, and the details of the plan most carefully laid 
out. 

The object was to destroy the viaduct if possible; 
but, in any case, to blow up part of the line. The risk 
involved not only the devoted adventurer himself, 
but the boat as well, for she could not, so long as he had 
still a chance of returning, quit the neighbourhood or 
even conceal herself by submerging. The approach 
was in itself an operation of the greatest delicacy. 
Commander Nasmith took his boat slowly towards the 
shore until her nose just grounded, only three yards 
from the rocks. The cliffs on each side were high enough 
to prevent the conning-tower being seen while in this 
position. At 2.10 a.m. Lieut. D'Oyly-Hughes dropped 
into the water and swam off, pushing the raft with his 
bale of gun-cotton, and his clothes and accoutrements, 
towards a spot some sixty yards on the port bow of the 
boat. His weapons were an automatic service revolver 
and a sharpened bayonet. He also had an electric torch 
and a whistle. At the point where he landed he found 
the cliffs unscalable. So he relaunched his raft and 
swam along to a better place. He reached the top 
after a stiff climb, approached the railway line by a 
careful prowl of half an hour, and went along it for five 
or six hundred yards, hugging his heavy and cumber- 
some charge. Voices then brought him up short. 
He peered about and saw three men sitting by the side 
of the line. After watching them for some time he 
decided that they were not likely to move, and that 
he must make a wide detour in order to inspect the 
viaduct. He laid down his gun-cotton, and crept 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 153 

inland, making good progress except for falling into a 
small farmyard, where the fowls, but luckily not the 
household, awoke and protested. At last he got within 
three hundred yards of the viaduct. It was easy to see, 
for there was a fire burning at the near end of it ; 
but there was also a stationary engine working, and 
a number of workmen moving about. Evidently it 
would be impossible to bring up and lay his charge 
there. 

He crept back therefore to his gun-cotton and 
looked about for a convenient spot to blow up the 
line. The best place seemed to be a low brick-work 
support over a small hollow. It was only 150 yards 
from the three men sitting by the line ; but there was 
no other spot where so much damage could be done, 
and Lieut. D'Oyly Hughes was a volunteer, prepared 
to take risks. He muffled the pistol for firing the fuse 
as tightly as possible, with a piece of rag, and pulled 
off. On so still a night it made a very loud noise. 
The three Turks heard it and he saw them instantly 
stand up. The next moment they were running down 
the line, with Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes going his 
best in front of them. But a chase of this kind was 
not what he wanted. His present object was to find a 
quiet spot on the shore where he could take to the water 
undisturbed, and he had no time to lose. He turned 
on his pursuers and fired a couple of shots ; the Turks 
were not hit, but they remembered their own weapons 
and began firing too, which was just the relief Lieut. 
Hughes needed. 

He had already decided against trying to climb 
down by the way he had come up ; but after a con- 
siderable run eastward, he struck the shore more 



154 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

conveniently about three-quarters of a mile from the 
small bay in which E. 11 was lying. As he plunged 
into the water, he had the joy of hearing the sound of 
a heavy explosion. His charge had hung fire for a 
long time, but when it went it went well ; fragments 
were hurled between a quarter and half a mile, and 
fell into the sea near the boat. There could be no 
doubt that the line was effectively cut ; and he could 
now give his whole attention to saving an officer to 
the Service. 

This was the most desperate part of the affair. 
After swimming some four hundred or five hundred yards 
out to sea, he blew a long blast on his whistle ; but the 
boat was behind the cliffs in her little bay and failed to 
hear him. Day was breaking rapidly ; the time of 
waiting for him must, he knew, be limited. With a 
decision and coolness beyond comment he swam ashore 
again and rested for a short time on the rocks — then 
swam off once more, directly towards the boat. Before 
he reached the bay, he had to discard in turn his pistol, 
his bayonet, and his electric torch. At last he rounded 
the point and his whistle was heard ; but, at the same 
moment, shouts came from the cliffs overhead, and 
rifle fire opened on the boat. 

She immediately backed, and came slowly astern 
out of the bay, intent only upon picking up Lieut. 
D'Oyly Hughes. But now came the most extra- 
ordinary part of the whole adventure. In the early 
morning mist the bow, the gun, and the conning-tower 
of the submarine appeared to her distressed officer to be 
three small rowing-boats advancing towards him, and 
rowing-boats could only mean enemies. He turned, 
swam ashore, and tried to hide himself under the cliffs. 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 155 

But he did not lose his head, and after climbing a few 
feet he looked back and realised his mistake. He 
shouted and plunged in again. Forty yards from the 
rocks he was at last picked up, nearly done, for he had 
run hard for his life and swum a mile in his clothes. But 
he had done his work and E. 11 was proud of him, as 
appears from the concluding sentence in her log : ' 5.5 
a.m. Dived out of rifle fire, and proceeded out of the 
Gulf of Ismid.' , 

Commander Nasmith ended his cruise with a brilliant 
week's work. On August 22 he fought an action with 
three armed tugs, a dhow, and a destroyer ; succeeded 
most adroitly in evading the destroyer, sinking the 
dhow and one of the tugs by gunfire, and capturing a 
number of prisoners, among whom was a German bank 
manager with a quantity of money for Chanak Bank. 
The prisoners willingly helped to discharge the cargo 
of another captured ship— they were apparently much 
surprised at being granted their lives. On the 25th, 
two large transports were sunk with torpedoes ; on 
the 28th, E. 11 and E. 2, in company, bombarded 
the magazine and railway station at Mudania. On 
September 1, Commander Nasmith had an hour's 
deliberate shooting at the railway viaduct, scoring a 
large number of hits | and on the 3rd he returned 
without misadventure to his base. 

Left to herself, E. 2 now found that she also pos- 
sessed a heroic lieutenant. Under the date September 7 
there stands the brief record : ' Lieutenant Lyon swam 
to and destroyed two dhows.' The story, so well begun, 
ends next day. At 2.15 a.m. this adventurer, like the 
other, swam off with a raft and bag of gun-cotton. His 
object, like the other's, was to destroy a railway bridge. 



156 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

His friends watched him until, at seventy yards' distance, 
he faded into the dusk. From that moment onwards 
no sound was ever heard from him. The night was 
absolutely still, and noises on shore were distinctly 
audible ; but nothing like a signal ever came. It had 
been agreed that if any trouble arose he should fire his 
Webley pistol, and the submarine should then show 
a red light and open fire on the station, which was 
300 yards distant. For five hours she remained there 
waiting. An explosion was heard, but nothing followed, 
and broad daylight found Commander Stocks still 
waiting with desperate loyalty. At 7.15 he dived out 
to sea. An hour later he came to the surface and cruised 
about the place, hoping that Lyon had managed some- 
how to get into a boat or dhow. There were several 
near the village, and he might be lying off in one. But 
no boat drifted out, then or afterwards. Commander 
Stocks came again at dawn next day — perhaps, as he 
said, to bombard the railway station, perhaps for another 
reason. Six days later he dived for home, breaking 
right through the Nagara net, by a new and daring 
method of his own. 

It was now Lieut. -Commander Bruce's turn again, 
and he passed all records by patrolling the Marmora 
successfully in E. 12 for forty days. He had two other 
boats in company during part of this time— E. 20 and 
H. 1 — and with the latter's help he carried out a very 
pretty ' spread attack ' on a gunboat off Kalolimno, on 
October 17. The intended manoeuvre was for E. 12 to 
rise suddenly and drive the enemy by gunfire over H. 1, 
who dived at the first gun. The first drive failed, the 
second was beautifully managed ; but, in the bad light 
of an approaching squall, H. 1's torpedo missed. In a 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 157 

third attempt the bird was reported hit by several 
shells, but she escaped in the darkness. Lieut. -Com- 
mander Bruce also did good shooting at a powder 
factory near Constantinople ; sank some shipping, and 
made some remarkable experiments with a new method 
of signalling. But his greatest experience was his 
return journey. 

He had passed through the net, he thought, but 
suddenly observed that he was towing a portion of it 
with him. The boat began to sink quickly, bows down ; 
the foremost hydroplane jammed. He immediately 
forced her nose up, by blowing ballast tanks and driving 
her at full speed. But, even in that position, she con- 
tinued to sink till she reached 245 feet. At that 
depth the pressure was tremendous. The conning-tower 
scuttles burst in, and the conning-tower filled with water. 
The boat leaked badly, and the fore compartment had 
to be closed off to prevent the water getting into the 
battery, where it would have produced the fatal fumes 
of chlorine gas. 

For ten mortal minutes the commander wrestled 
with his boat. At last, by putting three men on to 
the hydroplane with hand-gear, he forced the planes 
to work and the boat rose. He just managed to check 
her at twelve feet and got her down to fifty, but even 
at that depth six patrol vessels could be heard firing 
at her — probably she was still towing something which 
made a wake on the surface. 

Blind, and almost unmanageable, E. 12 continued to 
plunge up and down, making very little way beyond 
Nagara. The conning-tower and its compass were out 
of action, but the commander conned his boat from the 
main gyro compass, and when both diving gauges failed 



158 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

he used the gauge by the periscope. The climax was 
reached when at eighty feet, just to the south of Kilid 
Bahr, another obstruction was met and carried away. 
But this was a stroke of luck, for when the commander, 
by a real inspiration, put on full speed ahead and worked 
his helm, the new entanglement slid along the side 
of the boat and carried away with it the old one from 
Nagara. The boat rose steeply by the bow and broke 
surface. Shore batteries and patrols opened fire, and 
a small shell cracked the conning-tower ; others hit the 
bridge, and two torpedoes narrowly missed her astern. 
But she came safely through to Helles, and reached her 
base after a cruise of over 2,000 miles, 

H. 1 also put nearly 2,000 miles to her credit, though 
her cruise lasted only thirty days, as against E. 12's 
forty. Lieutenant Wilfred Pirie, her commander, took 
a hand in Lieut.-Commander Bruce's signalling ex- 
periments and co-operated in several of his military 
enterprises, as we have already seen. He also worked 
with E. 20 and was the last to meet her. This was on 
October 31, the day before he dived for home. After 
that, nothing more was heard of her till December 5, 
when Commander Nasmith, who was once more in the 
Marmora with E. 11, captured a Shirket steamer and 
obtained much information from the captain, a French- 
speaking Turk. According to his statement, E. 20 had 
been ambushed, and her officers and crew taken prisoners. 
He also gave details of the German submarines based 
at Constantinople — he thought there were ten of them, 
including three large ones. Before accepting this, 
we shall do well to refer again to Mr. Einstein, who 
reports four small boats coming from Pola, of which 
only three arrived ; and one larger one, U. 51, of which 



SUBMARINES IN THE DARDANELLES 159 

he tells an amusing story. U. 51 had been at Con- 
stantinople, but during August she went out and did 
not return ; it was rumoured that she had gone home, 
or been sunk. Then the Turks were electrified by 
news of the arrival of a new German super-submarine, 
over two hundred feet long. All Constantinople 
crowded to see her go out on August 30. ' Departure 
from Golden Horn of a new giant German submarine, 
the U. 54, over 200 feet long and with complete wireless 
apparatus.' Next day : ' The U. 54 turns out to be our 
old friend U. 51, with another number painted.' On 
September 2 Mr. Einstein adds sarcastically : ' Report 
that U. 54 was badly damaged by a Turkish battery 
at Silivri. ... To mask this, they are spreading the 
rumour that an English submarine ran aground, and 
will doubtless bring in the German boat under a false 
number as though she were a captured prey.' And 
two days later he was justified — ' U. 54 lies damaged 
in the Golden Horn from the fire of a Turkish battery. 
The reported sinking of an English boat is a downright 
lie.' 

Commander Nasmith went down the Straits on 
December 23, after a record cruise of forty-eight days. 
In that time he sank no less than forty-six enemy ships, 
including a destroyer, the Var Hissar, and ten steamers. 
A fortnight before he left, E. 2, Commander Stocks, 
came up, and did good work in very bad weather, 
until she was recalled on January 2, 1916. The season 
was over, and she found, in passing down the Straits, that 
the Turkish net had apparently been removed, either 
by the enemy themselves, or perhaps by the wear and 
tear of British submarines repeatedly charging it and 
carrying it away piecemeal. 



160 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

So ended our Eastern submarine campaign — a 
campaign in which our boats successfully achieved 
their military objects — in which, too, the skill of our 
officers and men was only surpassed by their courage, 
and by their chivalrous regard for the enemies whom 
they defeated. 



CHAPTER X 

THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 

Nothing in the history of the past four years has more 
clearly brought out the difference between the civilised 
and the savage view of war, than the record of 
the German U-boat campaign. All civilised men are 
agreed, and have for centuries been agreed, about 
war. In their view war may be unavoidable, in so 
far as all order and security are ultimately dependent 
on force ; but it is a lamentable necessity, and when 
unnecessary — that is, when undertaken for any object 
whatever except defence against aggression or tyranny 
— it is an abominable thing, a violation of human nature. 
This view is not inconsistent with the plain truth that 
the act of fighting is often pleasurable in itself, and 
that, when fighting in a right spirit, men often reach 
heights of nobility which they would never attain in 
peaceful occupations. 

The savage is in accord with this view on one point 
only. He has the primitive joy of battle in him ; but 
he cares nothing for right or wrong, and bis military 
power is exerted either wantonly, or with the object 
of plunder and domination. So long as he gratifies 
his selfish instincts, he does not care what happens 
to the rest of the human race, or to human nature. 
Civilised men have for centuries laid down rules of war, 

161 m 



162 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

that human industry and human society might suffer 
only such damage as could not be avoided in the exercise 
of armed force ; and above all, that human nature 
might not be corrupted by acts done or suffered in 
brutal violation of it. These rules of chivalry were 
not always kept, but by civilised nations they have 
never been broken without shame and repentance. 
Savage races sometimes have a rudimentary tradition 
of the kind — the less savage they. But, in general, 
they have a brute courage and a brute ferocity, without 
mercy or law ; and the worst of all are those who, 
living in community with races of merciful and law- 
abiding ideals, have themselves never been touched by 
the spirit of chivalry, and have ended by making the 
repudiation of it into a national religion of their own. 

It has long been a recognised characteristic of the 
British stock, all over the world, to regard a stout 
opponent with generous admiration, even with a feeling 
of fellowship ; and to deal kindly with him when de- 
feated. But this chivalry of feeling and conduct, now 
so widespread among us, is a spiritual inheritance and 
derived, not from our Teutonic ancestors, but from our 
conquest by French civilisation. It has never been 
shared by the Germans, or shown in any of their wars. 
Froissart remarked, five and a half centuries ago, on 
the difference between the French and English knights, 
who played their limited game of war with honour and 
courtesy, and the Germans, who had neither of those 
qualities. A century later, it is recorded of Bayard — 
' Le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche' — that when- 
ever he was serving in an army with a German con- 
tingent, he was careful to stay in billets till they had 
marched out, because of their habit of burning, when 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 163 

they left, the houses where they had found hospitality. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their bar- 
barity was unbounded ; the Thirty Years' War was the 
lasting shame of Europe, and the Sack of Magdeburg 
a final example of the triumph of the wild swine in 
man. In the eighteenth century, Prussia produced a 
grotesque anticipation of Zulu ideals, and called its 
chief Frederick the Great. In the Napoleonic wars, 
the cruelty of his German allies disgusted the Iron 
Duke, who had commanded many ruffians and seen some 
appalling days of horror. In our own time, we have 
witnessed the brutal attacks on Denmark and Austria, 
the treachery of the Ems telegram, and the develop- 
ment of Bismarck's blood-and-iron policy into the 
complete Machiavellism of Wilhelm II and his con- 
federates. It is not a new character, the German ; it 
is an old one, long inherited. Nemo repente fit Tir- 
pissimns. If anyone doubts this, or wishes to doubt 
it, let him look through the criminal statistics of the 
German Government for the ten years preceding the 
War, and read the book of Professor Aschaffenburg, 
the chief criminologist of Germany, published in 1913. 
He will there find it stated and proved, that the most 
violent and abominable forms of crime were then preva- 
lent in Germany, to a degree beyond all our experience — 
beyond all imagination of what was possible in a human 
community — and that the honest and patriotic writer 
himself regarded this ever-rising tide of savagery, 
among the younger generation, as ' a serious menace 
to the moral stability of Europe.' It is against this 
younger generation, with these old vices, that we have 
had to defend ourselves ; and now that we have beaten 
them, now that the time has come when, if they had 



164 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

been clean fighters and fellow-men, every British hand 
would have been ready for their grip, we can but hold 
back with grave and temperate anger, and the recollec- 
tion that we have first to safeguard the new world 
from those who have desolated and defiled the old. 

Anger it must still be, however grave and temperate. 
Look at the conduct of the War, and especially at the 
conduct of the submarine war, as coolly and scientifically 
as you can, you will not find it possible to separate 
the purely military from the moral aspect. Technically, 
the Germans were making trial of a new weapon which 
it was difficult to use effectively under the old rules. 
They quickly determined, not to improve or adapt the 
weapon, but to abandon the rules. For this they were 
rightly condemned by the only powerful neutral opinion 
remaining in the world. But they not only broke the 
law, they broke it in German fashion. Their lawless- 
ness, if skilfully carried out with the natural desire to 
avoid unnecessary suffering, might have been reduced 
to an almost technical breach, involving little or no 
loss of life. But they chose instead to exhibit to the 
world, present and to come, the spectacle of a whole 
Service practising murder under deliberate orders ; 
and adding strokes of personal cruelty hitherto known 
only among madmen or merciless barbarians. Finally — 
and this concerns our future intercourse even more 
nearly — the German people at home, a nation haughtily 
claiming pre-eminence in all virtue, moral and in- 
tellectual, accepted every order of their ruling caste, 
and applauded every act of their hordes in the battle, 
however abhorrent to sane human feeling. In all this, 
we need make no accusations of our own ; we have only 
to set out the facts, and the words with which the 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 165 

German people and their teachers received them and 
rejoiced in them. 

It was towards the end of 1914 that the German 
Admiralty conceived the idea of blockading the British 
Isles by means of a submarine fleet. There were, 
as we have already seen, great difficulties in the way. 
For the pursuit and capture of commerce, a submarine 
is not nearly so well fitted as an ordinary cruiser ; is 
not, in fact, well fitted at all. To hold up and examine 
a ship on the surface is too dangerous a venture for a 
frail boat with a very small crew ; to put a prize crew 
on board, and send the captured \essel into port, is 
generally impossible. As an exception, and in case 
of extreme necessity, it has always been recognised 
that a prize may be sunk, if the crew and passengers 
are safely provided for ; but this proviso, too, is almost 
impossible for a submarine to fulfil. Besides these 
technical difficulties, there was also the danger of 
offending neutral powers, especially if their ships were 
to be sunk without evidence that they were carrying 
contraband. 

Under the advice of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, 
it was decided to defy all these risks and difficulties. 
The question was asked by him, just before Christmas 
1914, 'What would America say, if Germany should 
declare a submarine war against all enemy trading 
vessels ? ' and on February 4, 1915, a formal proclama- 
tion followed from Berlin. This announced that the 
waters round Great Britain and Ireland were held to 
be a war-region, and that from February 1 8 4 every 
enemy merchant-vessel found in this region will be 
destroyed, without its always being possible to warn 
the crews or passengers of the dangers threatening.' 



166 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

No civilised Power had ever before threatened to 
murder non-combatants in this fashion ; but there 
was even worse to come — the seamen of nations not 
at war at all were to take their chance of death with 
the rest. ' Neutral ships will also incur danger in the 
war-region, where, in view of the misuse of neutral flags 
ordered by the British Government, and incidents 
inevitable in sea warfare, attacks intended for hostile 
ships may affect neutral ships also.' No ' misuse of 
neutral flags ' has ever been ordered by our Government. 
The destruction of a merchant-vessel or liner without 
warning or search, is not an incident ' inevitable in 
sea warfare ' ; it is an incident always avoided in any 
sea warfare except that waged by barbarians. 

A fortnight later the sinkings began ; and on March 9 
three ships were torpedoed, without warning, in one 
day. In the case of one of these, the Tangistan, 37 
men were killed or drowned out of the 38 on board. 
On March 15 the stewardess and five men of the Fingal 
were drowned. And on the 27th the crew of the Aguila 
were fired upon while launching their boats ; three 
were killed and several more wounded. On the 28th, 
the Elder-Dempster liner, the Falaba, from Liverpool 
to South Africa, was stopped and torpedoed in cold 
blood. As the crew and passengers sank, the Germans 
looked on from the deck of the U-boat, laughing and 
jeering at their struggling victims, of whom 111 perished. 
' The sinking of the Falaba, 3 said the New York Times, 
- is perhaps the most shocking crime of the War.' 

It did not long remain unsurpassed. In April, the 
German Embassy at Washington publicly advertised 
that vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or her 
allies were liable to destruction, and that travellers 



1 

THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 167 

sailing in them would do so at their own risk. Intending 
travellers smiled at this outrageous threat and went 
on booking their passages to Europe. Even when 
those about to sail in the huge liner Lusitania received 
anonymous telegrams, warning them that the ship 
would be sunk, no one believed that the Government 
of a great Power could seriously intend such a crime. 
Not a single berth was countermanded, and, on May 1, 
the Lusitania sailed from New York, carrying, besides 
her crew of 651, no less than 1,255 passengers. 

On the morning of Friday, May 7, she made her land- 
fall on the Irish coast. The sea was dangerously calm ; 
but Captain Turner, wishing ' to reach the bar at Liver- 
pool at a time when he could proceed up the river 
without stopping to pick up a pilot,' reduced speed 
to 18 knots, holding on the ordinary course. At 2 p.m. 
the Lusitania passed the Old Head of Kinsale ; at 
2.15 she was torpedoed without warning, and without 
a submarine having been sighted by anyone on board. 
Her main steam-pipe was cut, and her engines could 
not be stopped ; she listed heavily to starboard, and 
while she was under way it was very difficult to launch 
the boats. At 2.36 she went down, and of the 1,906 
souls on board, 1,134 went down with her, only 772 
being saved in the boats which got clear. 

This was, for the German Government and the 
German Navy, an unparalleled disgrace. The German 
nation had still the chance of repudiating such a 
crime. But they knew no reason for repudiating it ; it 
was congenial to their long-established character, and 
differed only in concentrated villainy from the count- 
less murders and brutalities which had troubled the 
criminologists before the War. The German people 



168 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

adopted the crime as their own act, and celebrated it 
with universal joy. ' The news,' said the well-known 
Kolnische Zeitung, ' will be received by the German 
people with unanimous satisfaction, since it proves 
to England and the whole world, that Germany is quite 
in earnest in regard to her submarine warfare.' The 
Kolnische Volkszeitung, a prominent Roman Catholic 
and patriotic paper, was even more delighted. ' With 
joyful pride we contemplate this latest deed of our 
Navy, and it will not be the last.' The two words 
4 joyful ' and ' pride ' are here the mark of true savagery. 
Only savages could be joyful over the horrible death 
of a thousand women, children, and non-combatants ; 
only savages could feel pride in the act, for it was in 
no way a difficult or dangerous feat. But this half- 
witted wickedness is clearly recognised in Germany as 
the national ideal. In the midst of the general 
exultation, when medals were being struck, holidays 
given to school children, and subscriptions got up for 
the ' heroic ' crew of the U-boat, Pastor Baumgarten 
preached on the * Sermon on the Mount,' and gave his 
estimate of the German character in these words : 
4 Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve, 
from the bottom of his heart, the sinking of the 
Lusitania — whoever cannot conquer his sense of the 
gigantic cruelty to countless perfectly innocent victims, 
and give himself up to honest delight at this victorious 
exploit of German defensive power — him we judge to 
be no true German.' 

4 It will not be the last.' The threat was soon 
made good. On August 9, of the same year, the White 
Star liner Arabic, one day out from Liverpool, was 60 
miles from the Irish coast when she sighted the ss. 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 169 

Dunsley in a sinking condition. She naturally steered 
towards her ; but as she approached, a submarine 
suddenly appeared from behind the Dunsley and 
torpedoed the Arabic without a moment's warning. 
Boats were got out, but the ship sank in eight minutes 
and 30 lives were lost out of 424. 

In both these cases the Germans, feeling that their 
joy and pride were not exciting the sympathy of neutral 
nations, afterwards tried to justify themselves by 
asserting that our liners carried munitions of war. 
This was obviously impossible in the case of the Arabic, 
which was bound from England to America. With 
regard to the Lusitania, an inquiry was held by Judge 
Julius Meyer of the Federal District Court of New 
York, who found that the Lusitania did not carry 
explosives, and added : ' The evidence presented has 
disposed, without question and for all time, of any false 
claims brought forward to justify this inexpressibly 
cowardly attack on an unarmed passenger steamer.' 

The year closed with the torpedoing, again without 
warning, on December 30, of the P. and O. liner Persia, 
from London to Bombay. She sank in five minutes, 
and out of a total of 501 on board, 335 were lost with 
her. Four of her boats were picked up after having 
been thirty hours at sea. 

The year 1916 was a not less proud one for Germany ; 
but it was distinctly less joyful. The American people 
took a fundamentally different view of war, especially 
of war at sea, and they began to express the difference 
forcibly. The German Government, after months of 
argument, was driven to make a show of withdrawing 
from the most extreme position. They admitted, on 
February 9, 1916, that their method was wrong where 



170 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

it involved danger to neutrals, and they offered to pay 
a money compensation for their American victims. 
They also repeated the pledge they had already given, 
and broken, that unarmed merchantmen should not 
be sunk without warning, and unless the safety of the 
passengers and crew could be assured ; provided that 
the vessels did not try to escape or resist. This again 
is a purely savage line of thought ; no civilised man 
could seriously claim that he was justified in killing 
unarmed non-combatants or neutrals by the mere fact 
of their running away from him. As for the ' safety 
of passengers and crew,' we shall see presently how 
that was ' assured.' 

But it matters little how the pledge was worded ; 
it was never intended to be kept. Only six weeks after 
it was given, it was cruelly broken once more. On 
March 24, 1916, the French passenger steamer Sussex 9 
carrying 270 women and children, and 110 other 
passengers, from Folkestone to Dieppe, was torpedoed 
without warning as she was approaching the French 
coast. Many were killed or severely injured by the 
explosion, others were drowned in getting out the boats. 
There were twenty-five Americans on board, and their 
indignation was intense ; for the ship was unarmed, and 
carried no munitions or war stores of any kind. Nor, 
as President Wilson pointed out, did she follow the 
route of the transports or munition ships. She was 
simply a well-known passenger steamer, and eighty of 
her company on board were murdered in cold blood by 
pirates. 

The President went on to say that the German 
Government * has failed to appreciate the seriousness 
of the situation which has arisen, not only out of the 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 171 

attack on the Sussex but out of the whole method 
and character of submarine warfare as they appear 
in consequence of the practice of indiscriminate de- 
struction of merchantmen, by commanders of German 
submarines. The United States Government,' he con- 
tinued, 4 has adopted a very patient attitude, and at 
every stage of this painful experience of tragedy upon 
tragedy, has striven to be guided by well-considered 
regard for the extraordinary circumstances of an un- 
exampled war. ... To its pain, it has become clear 
to it that the standpoint which it adopted from the 
beginning is inevitably right — namely, that the employ- 
ment of submarines for the destruction of enemy 
trade is of necessity completely irreconcilable with the 
principles of humanity, with the long existing, undis- 
puted rights of neutrals, and with the sacred privileges 
of non-combatants.' 

This note touches the real point, and settles it ; 
until the submarine is as powerfully armed and 
armoured, and manned with as large a crew as a 
cruiser of the ordinary kind, it is not a ship which can 
be used for the general purposes of blockade by any 
civilised nation. And it may be added that, even if 
the Germans had possessed submarines of a suitable 
kind, they could not have brought their prizes into 
port, because our Fleet and not theirs had the control 
of the seas. As it was, they pretended once more to 
submit, and gave nominal orders that merchant- vessels 
' shall not be sunk without warning and without saving 
human lives, unless these vessels attempt to escape or 
offer resistance.' 

It was not intended that this third promise should 
be kept ; there were other ways of evading the issue. 



172 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

The Rappahannock, a ship which sailed with a crew 
of 37, from Halifax, on October 17, 1916, was never 
heard of again, except in the wireless message by which 
the German Admiralty reported her destruction. The 
plan of sinking without a trace was first officially 
recommended by Count Luxburg, the German diplo- 
matic agent in the Argentine ; but the German Professor 
Flamm, of Charlottenburg, has also the honour of having 
proposed it in the paper Die Woche. ' The best would 
be if destroyed neutral ships disappeared without 
leaving a trace, and with everything on board, because 
terror would very quickly keep seamen and travellers 
away from the danger zones, and thus save a number 
of lives.' No doubt the Rappahannock was ' spurlos 
versenkt ' ; so was the North Wales, and so were many 
others meant to be. The German method, in 1916, 
was to torpedo the ship, and then shell the survivors 
in their open boats. This was done in the cases of 
the Kildare and the Westminster, both sunk in the 
Mediterranean ; but on neither occasion were the 
pirates successful in killing the whole of the crew, and 
their crime was therefore known and doubly execrated 
by the whole civilised world. None the less, they 
continued the hideous practice, and in the following 
eight months fired upon the helpless survivors of 
at least twelve ships, enumerated with authentic 
details in a list published by the Times on August 20, 
1917. 

On the whole, the year 1916 was a difficult one*for 
the German people. The objections of America to the 
practice of piracy were becoming uncomfortably urgent ; 
promises had to be made under compulsion, and the 
'joyful pride* of the nation would have been much 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 173 

diminished if it had not been reinforced by two successes 
of a new kind. On March 17, 1916, the Russian hospital 
ship Portugal was torpedoed off the Turkish coast in 
the Black Sea. She carried no wounded, but had on 
board a large crew and a staff of Red Cross nurses 
and orderlies. It was a clear morning, the ship was 
flying the Red Cross flag, and had a Red Cross con- 
spicuously painted on every funnel ; but she was 
deliberately destroyed, with 85 of those on board, 
including 21 nurses and 24 other members of the Red 
Cross staff. On November 21, a British hospital 
ship, the Britannic, was sunk in the same way. She 
was a huge vessel, and had on board 1,125 people, of 
whom 25 were doctors, 76 nurses, and 399 medical 
staff. The outrage was said by the Germans to be 
justified by * the suspicion of the misuse of the hospital 
ship for purposes of transport.' This suspicion was 
wholly unfounded, and the submarine commander 
had taken no steps to enquire into the truth. 

In 1917 and 1918, the 'proudest ' and most ■ joyful ' 
period in the short history of the German Navy, there 
was no longer any need for the humiliation of excuses. 
On January 31, 1917, Germany proclaimed her inten- 
tion of sinking at sight every ship found in the waters 
around the British Isles and the coast of France, or in 
the Mediterranean Sea. It was at the same time 
announced — quite falsely — that the German Govern- 
ment had conclusive proof of the misuse of hospital 
ships for the transport of munitions and troops, and 
that therefore the traffic of hospital ships within certain 
areas ' would no longer be tolerated.' President Wilson 
dealt promptly with this infamous proclamation. On 
February 3, he told Congress that he had severed 



174 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

diplomatic relations between America and Germany ; 
on April 6, he formally declared war. 

The savages were now entirely free to take their 
own way, and they took it. On the night of March 20, 
1917, the hospital ship Asturias, steaming with all 
navigating lights, and with all the proper Red Cross 
signs brilliantly illuminated, was torpedoed and sunk 
without warning. Of the medical staff on board, 14 
were lost, including one nurse, and of the ship's com- 
pany 29, including one stewardess. On March 30, the 
Gloucester Castle was torpedoed without warning, but 
her wounded were all got off in safety. On April 17, 
the Donegal and the Lanfranc were both sunk while 
bringing wounded to British ports. In the Donegal, 
29 wounded were lost, and 12 of the crew. The Lanfranc 
carried, besides 234 British wounded and a medical 
staff of 52, a batch of wounded German prisoners to 
the number of 167, including officers. ' The moment 
the torpedo struck the Lanfranc? wrote a British officer 
on board, ' the Prussians made a mad rush for the 
life-boats. One of their officers came up to a boat close 
to which I was standing. I shouted to him to go back, 
whereupon he stood and scowled, " You must save 
us" I told him to wait his turn. Other Prussians 
showed their cowardice by dropping on their knees and 
imploring pity. Some cried " Kamarad," as they do 
on the battle-field. I allowed none of them to pass 
me. ... In these moments, while wounded Tommies 
lay in their cots unaided, the Prussian moral dropped 
to zero. Our cowardly prisoners made another crazy 
effort to get into a life-boat. They managed to crowd 
into one — it toppled over. The Prussians were thrown 
into the water, and thev fought with each other in order 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 175 

to reach another boat containing a number of gravely 
wounded British soldiers. . . . The behaviour of our 
own lads I shall never forget ! '— ^but there is no need to 
tell that part of the story ; it is old, centuries old, and 
is repeated unfailingly whenever a British ship goes 
down. 

In July 1917, a new type of ' heroic deed ' was added 
to the * proud and joyful ' list. At 8 p.m., on July 31, 
the Belgian Prince was torpedoed without warning : 
the crew escaped in three boats. The submarine then 
ordered the boats to come alongside, took the master 
on board and sent him below. ' Then,' says Mr. Thomas 
Bowman, chief engineer, ' all the crew and officers were 
ordered aboard, searched, and the life-belts taken 
off most of the crew and thrown overboard. I may 
add, during this time the Germans were very abusive 
towards the crew. After this the German sailors got 
into the two life-boats, threw the oars, bailers, and 
gratings overboard, took out the provisions and 
compasses, and then damaged the life-boats with an 
axe. The small boat was left intact, and five German 
sailors got into her and went towards the (sinking) ship, 
When they boarded her, they signalled to the submarine 
with a flash-lamp, and then the submarine cast the 
damaged life-boats adrift and steamed away from the 
ship for about two miles, after which he stopped. About 
9 p.m. the submarine dived, and threw everybody in 
the water without any means of saving themselves.' 

Mr. Bowman swam till daylight, and was picked 
up by a chance patrol-boat. The only other survivors 
were a man named Silessi, and an American named 
Snell, who had succeeded in hiding a life-belt under his 
overcoat. 



176 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

The intention here was, of course, that the Belgian 
Prince should be ' spurlos versenkt ' ; and in other 
cases the same result was aimed at by ramming and 
sinking the boats with the shipwrecked men in them. 
The crews of the French steamers Lyndiane and Zumaya 
were destroyed in this way in the summer of 1918 ; 
and on June 27 the case of the Llandovery Castle 
marked, perhaps, the highest pitch of German ' pride.' 
This hospital ship was torpedoed and sunk without 
warning, though she was showing all her distinguishing 
lights. After she had gone down, the pirate commander 
took his U-boat on a smashing-up cruise among the 
survivors ; and by hurling it hither and thither, he 
succeeded in ramming and sinking all the boats and 
rafts except one, which escaped. The survivors in 
this boat heard the sound of gunfire behind them for 
some time ; it can only be conjectured that the 
murderers were finishing their work with shrapnel. 
The number of those cruelly done to death in this 
massacre was 244. 

The deeds here enumerated form a small but 
characteristic part of the German submarine record. 
The total number of women, children, and non-com- 
batants, murdered in the course of the U-boat blockade, 
is more than seventeen thousand. It has been a failure 
as a blockade ; nine million tons of British, and six 
million of allied and neutral shipping have been sunk ; 
but the U-boats have never, for a day, held the control 
of the sea. The policy was a device of savages, and 
of a nation of savages. There is no escape from this 
charge ; for the policy was approved and deliberately 
adopted, by the representatives of the whole German 
people, with the exception only of the few despised 



THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE 177 

and detested Minority Socialists. In October 1918, 
Herr Haase testified in the Reichstag : ' Most of the 
Parties are now trying to get away from the accentuated 
submarine war ... in reality all the Parties, except 
the Socialist Minority, share the guilt. The first resolu- 
tion in favour of submarine war was drafted by all the 
leaders, including Herr Scheidemann and Herr Ebert. 
The accentuation of submarine warfare was a natural 
consequence. You Socialists are also guilty because, 
to the very last, you gave the old regime the credits 
for carrying on the War.' 

The Germans do not yet realise the crime they 
confess ; they have corrupted one of the oldest and 
noblest bonds in human life — the brotherhood of * them 
that go down to the sea in ships, and have their business 
in great waters.' And this they have done because 
they are, by nature, not seamen but savages. 



CHAPTER XI 

TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 

Our Destroyer Service is perhaps as efficient, and as 
dashing, as anything ever seen in the way of organised 
human activity. It is long established, and its very 
perfection seems almost to stand in the way of our 
wonder at its achievement. The performance of our 
trawlers and drifters, on the other hand, is the more 
astonishing because it was an afterthought, the work of 
a service called into being— suddenly created, as it were, 
out of nothing — to meet the need of a grave moment 
which no imagination could well have provided against. 
When the moment came, everyone knew what might be 
expected from our Navy. It had not occurred to anyone 
that our fishermen might help to keep the sea against 
an outbreak of piracy, not only with courage but with 
marked success. Yet this they did ; and of all the dis- 
appointments which the War has brought our enemies 
this must have been one of the most unexpected and 
unpleasant. 

In reading the accounts which follow, it will be 
remarked that the work to which our trawlers and 
drifters set themselves, with such admirable readiness 
and courage, was not only new to them, but was con- 
tinually taking new and unforeseen forms, so that they 
have been called upon to show quickness and adaptabi- 
lity, as well as the capacity for training and discipline. 

178 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 179 

The armament and methods of the submarine of 1915 
were different from those of the later and more danger- 
ous boats of 1917. The trawlers, too, were much less 
adequately armed and equipped. Our men had at 
first to play a game in which there were no certain 
rules, and no standard weapons. We can hardly over- 
praise the officers of the R.N.R. who, in those critical 
days, took command of the special-service trawlers and 
fought them with the native skill of the Elizabethan 
sea-dogs. Nor can we admire too heartily the ready 
pluck and patriotism with which the skippers, mates, 
deck-hands and boys of our fishing-fleets turned their 
hands at a moment's notice from nets to depth-charges 
and twelve-pounders, and undertook the daily sweeping 
of mines, in seas now doubly treacherous, and a hundred 
times more deadly. There is a strange and almost 
pathetic sound, even in the names of the little ships 
themselves — names bearing none of the splendour of 
history or the prestige of war, but the humble and 
intimate memories of wives and children, or the jesting 
pride of the homely seaport where they lived in the 
time of peace. 

The Ina Williams (now His Majesty's Trawler, Ina 
Williams) was steaming towards the Irish coast at 
seven o'clock, one evening in early summer, when she 
sighted a large submarine on her port beam, some two- 
and-a-half miles away. The enemy had just come to the 
surface ; for there was no sign of him in that direction 
a few moments before, and he had not yet got his 
masts or ventilators up. The Ina Williams was armed, 
fortunately, with a 12-pounder gun, and commanded 
by Sub-Lieutenant C. Nettleingham, R.N.R., who had 
already been commended for good conduct, and after 



180 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

nine months' hard work was not likely to lose a righting 
chance. 

He headed straight for the U-boat. She might, of 
course, submerge at any moment, leaving the pursuer 
helpless. But Mr. Nettleingham calculated that she 
would disdain so small an enemy, and remain upon the 
surface, relying upon her trained gunners and keeping 
her superiority of speed, with her torpedoes in case of 
extreme necessity. He was right in the main. The 
U-boat accepted battle by gunfire ; but a torpedo which 
missed the starboard quarter of the Ina Williams by 
only 10 feet must have been fired at least as soon as the 
trawler sighted her, and showed that the enemy was not 
disposed to underrate even a British fishing-boat. Mr. 
Nettleingham had saved his ship by the promptness 
with which he turned towards the submarine, and he 
now opened fire, keeping helm to avoid any further 
torpedoes. 

The fight was a triumph for English gunnery. The 
Ina Williams had the good fortune to have fallen in 
with a wildshot. All his five shells were misses — some 
short, some on the trawler's starboard side. The gunner 
of the Ina Williams had probably had no experience of 
firing at a moving target, almost level with the water. 
The U-boat was going 10-12 knots, too, and that was 
faster than he expected. The result was that his first 
three shots failed to get her ; they fell astern, but each 
one distinctly nearer than the last. The pirate com- 
mander did not like the look of things ; he called in his 
guns' crews and prepared to submerge. Too late. The 
British gunner's fourth shot caught the U-boat on the 
water-line, half-way between conning-tower and stern. 
A fifth followed instantly, close abaft the conning-tower 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 181 

itself. The wounded submarine was probably by this 
time out of hand, for she continued to submerge. Just 
before she disappeared, the sixth shell struck the con- 
ning-tower full at the water-line, and the fight was over. 
It had lasted fifteen minutes, and the Ina Williams 
was still 3,400 yards away when the enemy sank. She 
steamed straight on to the position of the U-boat, and 
found that even after the ten minutes which it took her 
to reach the spot, large bubbles of air were still rising, 
and the sea was being more and more thickly covered 
with a large lake of oil. The depth was fifty fathoms, 
and out of that depth, while the Ina Williams steamed 
round and round her buoy, she had the satisfaction of 
seeing the dead brute's life-blood welling up with bursts 
of air-bubbles for nearly an hour, until the sea was 
thick for five hundred yards, and tainted for a much 
further distance. The smell of the stuff was peculiar, 
and new to the trawler's crew ; they could not find the 
right word to describe it. But they were eager to scent 
it again, and as often as possible, for it meant good 
work, good pay and a good report. 

This was a thoroughly professional bit of service, 
a single fight at long range ; but it was no smarter 
than the sharp double action fought by His Majesty's 
Armed Smacks Boy Alfred and Pll Try against two 
German submarines. The British boats were com- 
manded by Skipper Walter S. Wharton, R.N.R., and 
Skipner Thomas Crisp, R.N.R., and were out in the 
North Sea when they sighted a pair of U-boats coming 
straight towards them on the surface. The first of these 
came within 300 yards of Boy Alfred and stopped. Then 
followed an extraordinary piece of work, only possible to 
a German pirate. The U-boat signalled with a flag to 



182 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Boy Alfred to come nearer, and at the same time opened 
fire upon her with a machine-gun or rifles, hitting her in 
many places, though by mere chance not a single casualty 
resulted. 

Skipper Wharton's time had not yet come ; he was 
not for a duel at long range. He threw out his small 
boat, and by this submissive behaviour encouraged the 
U-boat to come nearer, which she did by submerging 
and popping up again within a hundred yards. A 
man then came out of the conning-tower and hailed Boy 
Alfred, giving the order to abandon ship as he intended 
to torpedo. But 100 yards was a very different affair 
from 300. It was, in fact, a range Skipper Wharton 
thought quite suitable. He gave the order ' Open fire ' 
instead of c Abandon ship,' and his gunner did not fail 
him. The first round from the 12-pounder was just 
short, and the second just over ; but having straddled 
his target, the good man put his third shot into the sub- 
marine's hull, just before the conning-tower, where it 
burst on contact. The fourth shot was better still ; it 
pierced the conning-tower and burst inside. The U-boat 
sank like a stone, and the usual wide-spreading patch of 
oil marked her grave. 

In the meantime the second enemy submarine had 
gone to the east of I'll Try, who was herself east of Boy 
Alfred. He was a still more cautious pirate than his 
companion, and remained submerged for some time, 
cruising around I'll Try with only a periscope showing. 
Skipper Crisp, having a motor fitted to his smack, was 
too handy for the German, and kept altering course so 
as to bring the periscope ahead of him, whenever it was 
visible. The enemy disappeared entirely no less than 
six times, but at last summoned up courage to break 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS IS* 

surface. The hesitation was fatal to him — he had 
given the smack time to make every preparation. He 
appeared suddenly at last, only 200 yards off, on Fll 
Try's starboard bow ; but his upper deck and big 
conning-tower were no sooner clearly exposed than 
Skipper Crisp put his helm hard over, brought the 
enemy on to his broadside and let fly with his 13-pounder 
gun. At this moment a torpedo passed under the 
smack's stern, missing only by ten feet, then coming to 
the surface, and running along on the top past Boy 
Alfred. It was the U-boat's first and last effort. In 
the same instant, Fll Try's shell — the only one fired — 
struck the base of the conning-tower and exploded, 
blowing pieces of the submarine into the water on all 
sides. 

The U-boat immediately took a list to starboard and 
plunged bows first — she disappeared so rapidly that the 
gunner had not even time for a second shot. Fll Try 
immediately hurried to the spot, and there saw large 
bubbles of air coming up and a large and increasing 
patch of oil. She marked the position with a Dan 
buoy, and stood by for three-quarters of an hour with 
Boy Alfred. Finally, as the enemy gave no sign of life, 
the two smacks returned together to harbour. 

For this excellent piece of work the two skippers were 
suitably rewarded. Skipper Wharton, who had already 
killed two U-boats and had received the D.S.C. and the 
D.S.M. with a bar, was now given a second bar to his 
D.S.C. Skipper Crisp already had the D.S.M., and now 
received the D.S.C. But with regard to the gratuity 
given to the whole crew of each boat for the destruction 
of an enemy submarine, a distinction was made, Boy 
Alfred being rewarded for a * certainty ' and Fll Try 



184 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

for a * probable ' only. This is interesting as showing 
the scrupulous caution with which our anti-submarine 
returns have been made up. The Germans have tried 
to persuade their public, at home and abroad, that 
many of the U-boats claimed to have been destroyed by 
us have, in fact, escaped, with more or less injury, and 
made their way home to refit. The exact contrary is 
the case. No one, with any power of judging the evidence, 
could examine our official reports without coming to the 
conclusion that the number of our successes has been 
greatly underestimated in the published records. The 
Admiralty have no doubt felt that, where so much is 
at stake, it is better to run no risk at al* of misrepresent- 
ing the situation and its possibilities. If certainties 
only are counted, and the campaign judged and con- 
ducted accordingly, there will be no disillusionment 
for us, and the long list of ' probables * will give us a 
margin, uncertain in quantity, but absolutely sure to 
be on the right side of the account. This policy has 
entirely justified itself. In the long record of the anti- 
submarine work of these four years, only one complete 
disappointment has occurred, only one dead U-boat 
has come to life again. On the other hand, the first 
list of certainties published by the Admiralty— the list 
of 150 pirate commanders put out of action — could not 
be disputed, even by the authors of the German com- 
muniques. It is not an estimate, it is a statement, 
beyond suspicion or dispute ; but to ensure this result 
restraint was necessary, and the restraint was often 
regretted by the authorities as much as by the British 
crews who felt themselves stinted of their full reward. 
There was probably no member of the Board who did 
not wish that more could be done for the gallant men of 




TU Try's shell struck the base of the conning-twer.' 



186 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

I'll Try ; but her report, as here paraphrased, just fell 
short of the full evidence required by the rules. She 
killed her bird ; but she could not prove that he was not 
a runner. 

The same year, in the second week of August, two 
other smacks distinguished themselves in action. The 
first of these was the G. and E. y commanded by Lieuten- 
ant C. E. Hammond, R.N. She was sailing at mid-day 
in company with the smack Leader, and about a mile to 
north of her, when she saw a submarine break surface 
about three cables beyond to the south-east. Lieutenant 
Hammond must have found it hard to play a waiting 
game, but to go at once to the help of his consort would 
have revealed that he was no unarmed fishing-boat. 
The pirate, therefore, was able to b >ard and blow up 
Leader with a bomb, after ordering her crew into their 
small boat. He then came on fearlessly, closing, as he 
thought, another helpless victim. When within 200 
yards he fired a rifle, and G. and ESs crew encouraged 
him by getting out a boat ; but when he came to forty 
yards and slewed round, parallel to the smack,Lieutenant 
Hammond hoisted the White Ensign and opened fire. 
The U-boat appeared to be paralysed with astonish- 
ment. For a whole minute she lay motionless, and that 
minute was just long enough for G. and E.'s gunner. 
He got off five shots in a tremendous hurry. One was a 
miss, and two hit the rail of the smack ; but one of 
these went on, and penetrated the enemy very usefully in 
the lower part of the conning-tower. The other two 
were clean hits in much the same spot. Down went the 
enemy — not in the way a submarine would dive by 
choice, but nose first, and with stern up at a very high 
angle. The five men who had been on her deck and 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 187 

conning-tower, for the purpose of enjoying a little 
shooting at British fishermen, got an entirely new view 
of sport in these sixty seconds. One was killed with a 
rifle-shot by a petty officer on the G. and E. t three dis- 
appeared in the shell bursts, and the fifth was seen still 
clinging to the conning-tower, as the U-boat carried 
him down to death. The tide made all hope of rescue 
vain — it was too strong even for a buoy to be put down 
to mark the spot. 

Four days later, on the same ground, the smack 
Inverlyon, commanded by Skipper Phillips, with an R.N. 
gunner, Ernest M. Jehan, sighted a submarine at 8.20 
p.m., steering right towards her in the twilight. When 
the two boats were within less than thirty yards of each 
other, the submarine was seen to be a U-boat flying the 
German ensign, with an officer on deck hailing ' Boat ! ' 
Evidently he expected to be obeyed, for he stopped 
dead and gave no sign of action. He had no gun 
mounted, and appeared to be out of torpedoes. 

Mr. Jehan might well have been taken by surprise 
by this sudden meeting at close quarters in the dusk ; 
but he was not. In an instant the White Ensign was 
hoisted, and he himself was firing his revolver at the 
officer steering the enemy boat. This was his pre- 
arranged signal for his mates to open fire, and it was 
obeyed with deadly quickness and precision. The gun 
was a mere pop-gun, a 3-pounder, but at the range it 
was good enough. Of the first three rounds fired, the 
first and third pierced the centre of the enemy's conning- 
tower and burst inside, while the second struck the 
after part of the same structure and carried it away, 
ensign and all. The officer fell overboard on the star- 
board side. 



188 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

The submarine was row out of hand. The tide 
brought her lose round Invrrlyon , s stern, within ten 
yards, and the pun was instantly slewed on to her again. 
This time, six rounds of extra-rapid fire were got off. 
The first hit the conning-tower, the second and fourth 
went over, the third, fifth and sixth hulled the U-boat 
dead. She sank, with the same ominous nose-dive, her 
stern standing up at an angle of 80°. The swirl was 
violent, and in it three bodies were flung to the surface. 
A shout was heard from one of them — a pirate, but a 
man in agony. Skipper Phillips stripped, took a lifebuoy 
in his arms and leaped overboard. He swam strongly, 
but vainly, in that rush of wild water and oil, and at 
last had to be dragged home on his own buoy. The 
smack meantime was drifting over the dead submarine, 
and brought up when her trawl got fast upon it. 

The trawl was even more useful in another action, 
where it actually brought on the fight at close quarters 
and made victory possible. One day in February, H.M. 
Trawler Rosetta, Skipper G. A. Novo, R.N.R., had gone 
out to fish, but she had on deck a 6-pounder gun con- 
cealed in an ingenious manner which need not be 
described. She joined a small fleet of four smacks and 
two steam trawlers some forty-five miles out, and fished 
with them all night. Before dawn next morning a voice 
was heard shouting out of the twilight. It came from 
one of the steam trawlers : ' Cut your gear away ! 
there's a submarine three-quarters of a mile away ; 
he's sunk a smack and I have the crew on board.' 

* All right, thank you ! ' said Skipper Novo — to 
get away from the pirate was precisely what he did not 
wish to do. For some fifteen minutes he went on towing 
his trawl, in hope of being attacked ; but as nothing 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 189 

happened, he thought he was too far away from the 
smacks, and began to haul up his trawl. He was 
bringing his boat round before the wind, and had all 
but the last twenty fathoms of the trawl in, when the 
winch suddenly refused to heave any more, and the 
warp ran out again about ten fathoms — a thing beyond 
all experience. ' Hullo ! ' said the skipper, ' there's 
something funny. 5 He jumped off the bridge and asked 
the mate what was the reason of the winch running 
back. 'I don't know, skipper — the stop-valve is 
opened out full.' The skipper tried it himself ; then 
went to the engine-man and asked him if full steam was 
on. ' The steam's all right.' * Then reverse winch ! ' 
said the skipper, and went to give a hand himself, as 
was his custom in a difficulty. The hauling went on 
this time, all but to the end. 

Suddenly the mate gripped him by the arm — ' Skipper, 
a submarine on board us ! '—and there the enemy was, 
a bare hundred yards off on the starboard quarter. 
' Hard a- starboard, and a tick ahead ! ' shouted the 
skipper, and rushed for the gun, with the crew following. 
The gun was properly in charge oi the mate, and he 
got to it first ; but the brief dialogue which followed 
robbed him of his glory. ' Right, skipper ! ' he said, 
meaning thereby ' This is my job.' But in the same 
breath the skipper said : ' A J right, Jack. I got him ! 
You run on bridge and keep him astern.' The Rosetta's 
discipline was good — the mate went like a man, and 
the skipper laid the gun. 

He was justified by his success. The enemy was very 
quickly put out of action, being apparently unable to 
cope with the whirlwind energy of Skipper Novo. 
From the moment of breaking surface less than sixty 



190 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

seconds had gone by, when the gun of the Rosetta began 
speaking, and spoke nothing but hard words directly to 
the point. The target was 250 feet long, and only 300 
feet away. Every shot was a hit. The fourth caused 
an explosion, and flames shot up four or five feet above 
the submarine. Evidently she could no longer submerge, 
and she attempted to make off upon the surface. But 
Skipper Novo was right in his estimate of his own 
chance — he had 'got him/ His fifth, sixth, seventh 
and eighth shots were all direct hits on the receding 
target, and at the eighth the enemy sank outright. 

Rosetta then spoke the smack Noel, which had been 
close to her daring the action, and now confirmed all 
her observations. Skipper Novo had no doubt that the 
U-boat had been the obstruction which was tangled in 
his net. She had carried it all away, and to get clear 
had been obliged to come to the surface without knowing 
where she might find herself. As to her fate, there was 
no reasonable doubt. But since neither debris nor 
survivors were seen, the case, with rigid scrupulosity, 
was refused a place among the certainties. The enemy 
are no better off for that. 

The story of two trawlers, Lark II and Lysander III % 
will show how much difference luck may make in giving 
or withholding the evidence necessary to prove a com- 
plete success. These two boats were included in a 
small division patrolling off the Cornish coast, and 
hunted two submarines with apparent success, one in 
March and one in April, but obtained the maximum 
award on the first occasion only. The third ship of the 
division was then the drifter Speculation, and the divi- 
sion commander was Chief Skipper Donald McMillan, 
R.N.R. He was in a certain position close inshore on 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 191 

March 10, listening with hydrophones for a U-boat 
which was known to be on the prowl, when he sighted 
a steamer about four miles away in the act of being 
blown up. He made for her with all speed, but she 
sank in four minutes ; twenty -one of her crew of twenty- 
five were found still floating in one small boat and a 
raft. The Chief Skipper ' interrogated ' the poor men, 
and found that the ship was a Spanish steamer, the 
Christina. Then he put them on board Speculation, 
and ordered her to take them at once into St. Ives, 
while Lark and Lysander carried out their hydrophone 
work as before. 

When Speculation had gone about 2J miles on her 
way, the Chief Skipper suddenly heard her fire a shot ; 
and the same moment she changed course and blew 
her siren. Lark and Lysander raced to join the hunt 
with their utmost speed. They found Speculation 
cruising round, with depth-charges ready to drop. She 
had already dropped two, besides firing her 3-pounder 
into the wake of the enemy's periscope, and had seen 
not only oil, but some wreckage, and a large object 
which rolled over and disappeared again. The Chief 
Skipper ordered her to proceed on her course to St. Ives, 
and then instructed Lysander III to stand by and drop 
her depth-charges on the chance of stirring up the 
wounded U-boat. Within five minutes he sighted the 
wake of a submarine on his own port bow, only 100 
yards distant but going fast. He made a bee line for the 
wake, thinking it possible he might ram her, and when 
just over the disturbance on the water he dropped his 
first depth-charge. Then, as the submarine was still 
making headway, he closed again and dropped his second 
charge right over the wake. The enemy thereupon 



192 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

showed oil and ceased to make headway ; so Lark and 
Lysander alternately bombed his supposed resting-place 
with no less than eight charges. After nearly an hour 
of this, they stood by, listening on hydrophones and 
watching the oil still rising. Then a destroyer arrived, 
asked questions, heard the whole story and steamed 
away without comment. Two hours later a motor- 
launch came by, and was good enough to ex mine the 
spot and contribute one more depth-charge. Two 
hours more, and Speculatio returned to spend the 
night with her division — all listening keenly, but with- 
out result. Finally, next morning, two sweep rs, John 
Kidd and Castor II, arrived and swept round about 
the buoy which had been put down. The three boats 
of the division stood by and watched anxiously ; they 
felt sure that the sweep fouled some object between 
9 and 10 a.m., but at 11.15 they received the order to 
resume their patrol and went reluctantly away, fore- 
boding a verdict of ' probably damaged.' 

Twelve days later they had a joyful surprise. It 
had been decided that as the depth of water, the 
season, and other circumstances were all favourable, 
it was worth while to send a diver to explore the spot. 
Accordingly, on March 25, an officer diver went down 
and succeeded in finding and examining the submarine. 
She was lying on her port beam-ends in twenty-four 
fathoms. Her conning-tower had been practically 
blown off — evidently by a depth-charge which had 
made a direct hit or something very near it. She 
had also a large fracture in the hull, on the port 
side amidships. This was, of course, conclusive, and 
the division received the maximum award. They were 
the more jubilant, because they had been quite certain 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 193 

of their kill, and had picked up what they considered 
first-rate evidence — not debris indeed, nor survivors, 
but a lot of onions, which must have been brought there 
by somebody. Also they had been told that their 
' obstruction ' was the wreck of an Italian ship, tor- 
pedoed just about there only a few days before. It 
was a consolation to have so annoying a suggestion 
conclusively disproved. 

The next action of Lark II and Lysander III fell 
short of this final felicity. In April the division 
passed under the command of Chief Skipper G. Birch, 
R.N.R., and the third place in it was filled by the 
drifter Livelihood. They were patrolling one evening 
off Tintagel Head, when a periscope was sighted by 
Lark II, about 500 yards away on the starboard quarter, 
and going N.N.W. at the very slow speed of two 
knots. It was noted as being very high, quite three 
feet out of the water. The Chief Skipper came round 
immediately in order to bring his guns to bear ; but the 
periscope had disappeared before he could accomplish 
this. He then hoisted the necessary signals for warning 
the rest of the division, steamed towards the last position 
of the submarine, lay to, and listened with the hydro- 
phone. But at this moment the periscope reappeared ; 
it was now only one foot above the surface and not 
more than twenty yards away, on the starboard beam. 
This was, of course, too near for a torpedo, and Lark II 
accordingly got her chance. 

The first shot from her 12-pounder was an extra- 
ordinarily happy one — it hit the periscope and scattered 
it in splinters. The Chief Skipper lost not a moment — 
he rang the telegraph for full speed, turned towards 
the enemy, and as soon as he got way on the ship dropped 



194 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

a depth-charge set for fifty feet. His miniature fleet 
was perfectly in hand, and seconded him brilliantly. 
Drifter Livelihood closed on his port quarter, and dropped 
her depth-charge almost on the same spot ; trawler 
Lysander III followed with another. The three boats 
continued to play the game in combination ; the leader 
dropping five depth-charges in all and the others three 
each. All these exploded satisfactorily, and one of 
the Chief Skipper's produced a second heavy under- 
water explosion, after which large quantities of dark 
oil and air bubbles rose to the surface. The position 
was then buoyed, and the division patrolled the area 
all night, using hy drophones at intervals. Next morning 
a wireless message was sent to Penzance, and another 
trawler took the watch as relief. Sweeping operations 
followed, but the bottom was reported rocky and foul, 
and no satisfactory result was obtained. Diving was 
not possible in such a place, and in the end the official 
verdict was one of ' Probably seriously damaged.' 
For this the reward was only half of what would have 
been given for a certainty ; and, to the gallant trawlers 
and drifters, that was probably the smallest part of 
the disappointment. It is trying to end so exciting a 
chase with a cry of ' gone away,' and especially so when 
you are positive that the cry is a mistaken one. The 
evidence for a kill was very strong — the enemy's speed 
was slow, his periscope was blinded, he was liberally 
depth-charged at close quarters — there was a violent 
double explosion to be accounted for, and a good uprush 
of oil and bubbles. But the line is strictly drawn, and 
this time the conclusive evidence was unprocurable. 

Among the many cases of fine team-work by these 
gallant little fishing-boats two more must be given here — 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 195 

one as an example of the deadly thoroughness and pre - 
cision with which our trawler and drifter divisions can 
do their hunting, and the other to show how keenly 
they will fight against an enemy armed with vastly 
superior guns. 

A division of four drifters — Young Fred, Pilot Me, 
Light, and Look Sharp — under Lieutenant Thomas 
Kippins, R.N.R., was patrolling one afternoon in April, 
when at 5.25 p.m. Skipper Andrew Walker, R.N.R., 
sighted a periscope about 150 feet away on the starboard 
quarter of his ship, Pilot Me. He immediately altered 
course to starboard, and the submarine thereupon 
submerged entirely. Skipper Walker passed over the 
spot where she was last seen and dropped a depth- 
charge, altered course rapidly and dropped another, 
fired a red rocket to warn the division, dropped a third 
and fourth depth-charge, and hoisted the signal asking 
his commander to come north at full speed. He then 
stopped his engines and listened on his hydrophone. 
Hearing no sound, he made for Young Fred, who had 
altered course and was now closing him. When the 
two boats were only 300 yards apart, the submarine 
came to the surface right between them. She rose at 
an angle of 45°, bows up, and hung so for about two 
minutes, during which Pilot Me, Light, and Look Sharp 
all opened fire, and the two last claim to have hit her. 
At any rate she went down again, stern first ; but 
Lieutenant Kippins, who was steaming straight for 
her in hope of ramming, was not disposed to take 
any chances. He took Young Fred exactly over her, 
dropped two depth-charges and passed on. The explo- 
sion which followed was a very heavy one ; the fountain 
of water which rose was mast high and completely 



196 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

hid the drifter flagship from her companions, who 
thought for a moment that she ' had gone.' 

The Chief Skipper was far from gone. The spray was 
hardly off his deck, and the Young Fred was still rocking, 
when he turned again and then again, dropping two 
more depth-charges, and ordered Pilot Me to put down 
a Dan buoy to mark the position. This was done, 
but it was but marking a grave. H.M.S. Express, who 
had received a wireless signal and hurried to the spot, 
reports that she found the sea covered with oil, which 
had extended in a long stream to the northward on the 
ebb tide. Thick oil was still rising to the surface, and 
there were streaks of dark brown colour, very noticeable, 
and distinct from oil. Even when four miles to leeward, 
whilst approaching, the new comers had been struck 
by a very strong smell of petrol, which naturally gave 
them hopeful expectations. 

The expectations were fulfilled ; in fact the evidence 
brought on board the Express went almost beyond what 
was acceptable to a British ship's company who had not 
just been fighting for their lives. The articles of wreck- 
age which it is possible to mention included a quantity 
of brand-new woodwork, with bright brass fittings, a 
large portion of a white wooden bunk, bits of furniture 
and living-spaces, a shot-hole plug, two black-painted 
gratings, a mattress and bedcover, two seamen's caps, 
with cap ribbons of the IV and V Untersee Boot Flotille, 
and their owners' names, a vest and two pairs of drawers ; 
also a red flag, a fit ensign for these lawless savages. 
For their destruction, it is hardly necessary to say, the 
full reward was given. Lieutenant Thomas Kippins 
and Skipper Andrew Walker also received the D.S.C. 
and two of their men the D.S.M. 



TRAWLERS, SMACKS, AND DRIFTERS 197 

This was an execution rather than a fight ; but our 
fishermen can show their battles too, battles worthy of 
the sea-dogs who kept the narrow seas against more 
worthy enemies. In the Downs, and in the first twilight 
of a November morning, three of His Majesty's armed 
drifters — Present Help, Paramount and Majesty — were 
beginning their daily sweep, when Skipper Thomas 
Lane, R.N.R., of the Present Help, which was spare ship 
at the moment, sighted an object one mile distant to 
the eastward. As day was breaking, she was quickly 
marked for a pirate submarine — a huge one, with two 
big guns mounted on deck, one a four-inch and one a 
22-pounder. Nevertheless Present Help, Paramount 
and Majesty opened fire at once with their 6-pounders, 
not standing off, but closing their enemy, and continuing 
to close her under heavy fire until they were hitting her 
with their own light guns. Even our history can hardly 
show a grander line of battle than those three tiny 
ships bearing down upon their great antagonist ; and 
if U. 48 did not fall to their fire, it is none the less true 
that her surrender was due in the first place to their 
determined onset. 

It was Paramount who took and gave the first 
knocks. Her searchlight was shot away, and she in 
reply succeeded in putting one of the pirate's guns out 
of action. In the meantime — and none too soon — 
Present Help had sent up the red rocket ; it was seen 
by two other armed drifters, Acceptable and Feasible, 
who were less than two miles off, and by H.M.S. 
Gipsy, who was four miles away. Skipper Lee, of the 
Acceptable, immediately sang out 'Action,' and both 
boats blazed away at 3,000 yards' range, getting in at 
least one hit on the enemy's conning-tower. At the 



198 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

same moment came the sound of the Gipsy's 12-pounder 
as she rushed in at full speed. 

The U-boat started with an enormous, and apparently 
overwhelming, advantage of gun power. She ought to 
have been a match, twice over, for all six of our little 
ships. But she was on dangerous ground, and the 
astounding resolution of the attack drove her off her 
course. In ten minutes the drifters had actually pushed 
her ashore on the Goodwin Sands — Paramount had 
closed to thirty yards ! Drake himself was hardly 
nearer to the galleons. Then came Gipsy, equally 
resolute. Her first two shots fell short ; the third was 
doubtful, but after that she got on, and the pirate's 
bigger remaining gun was no match for her 12-pounder. 
After two hits with common pointed shell, she put in 
eight out of nine lyddite, smashed the enemy's last gun 
and set him on fire forward. Thereupon the pirate 
crew surrendered and jumped overboard. 

It was now 7.20 and broad daylight. Lieutenant- 
Commander Frederick Robinson, of the Gipsy, gave the 
signal to cease fire, and the five drifters set to work to 
save their drowning enemies. Paramount, who was 
nearest, got thirteen, Feasible one, and Acceptable 
two, of whom one was badly wounded. The Gipsy's 
whaler was got away, and her crew, under Lieutenant 
Gilbertson, R.N.R., tried for an hour to make headway 
against the sea, but could not go further than half-a-mile, 
the tide and weather being heavily against them. They 
brought back one dead body, and one prisoner in a 
very exhausted condition ; afterwards they went off 
again and collected the prisoners from the other ships. 
Then came the procession back to port — a quiet and 
unobtrusive return, but as glorious as any that the 



200 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Goodwins have ever seen. Full rewards followed, and 
the due decorations for Skippers Thomas Lane, Edward 
Kemp and Richard William Barker. But their greatest 
honour was already their own — they had commanded, in 
victorious action, His Majesty's Armed Drifters, Present 
Help, Paramount and Majesty. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE DESTROYERS 

The war record of our destroyers is unsurpassed. We 
know that to the Grand Fleet we owe, as to a vast and 
solid foundation, the unshaken fabric of our sea power, 
and that in the day of battle it has always proved 
itself incomparable But we hardly, perhaps, realised 
that in our destroyer force we have a second Grand 
Fleet, equal to the other in spirit and seamanship, 
greater in numbers, and counting its days of battle not 
by twos or by twenties, but by the thousand. The work 
of the destroyers has been unceasing. Setting apart 
such service as their whirlwind attacks at Jutland, they 
have done perhaps nine-tenths of the hard work of the 
War, cruising and reconnoitring, convoying or rescuing 
our ships, and hunting the pirate submarine. The 
strain has been great, for they have been called upon 
incessantly to do the work of twice their number ; 
they have answered the call, not with a dogged or defen- 
sive courage, but with unfailing readiness and dash. 
They have shown themselves the true successors of the 
frigates and ships that were the pride of our proudest 
days in the old time ; their commanders are the right 
heirs of the Brookes and Blackwoods, Parkers and 
Pellews. 

Jn considering the Anti-Submarine work of the 

201 



202 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

destroyers, it must be remembered that hunting is not, 
generally speaking, their first object. They are out, not 
for sport, but for ' business as usual.' They have a 
large number of U-boats to their credit, but in most of 
these cases the kill was incidental ; it resulted from the 
perfection of skill and smartness with which some pro- 
fessional duty was being performed, at the moment 
when the opportunity occurred. A few typical examples 
will make this clear. 

In August 1917, an upward sweep of the Norwegian 
coast was being carried out by a light squadron, consist- 
ing of three cruisers and six destroyers, the whole under 
the orders of H.M.S. Yarmouth, Captain Thomas D. 
Pratt, R.N., with Commander Geoffrey Corbett, R.N., 
as Senior Officer of Destroyers. The light cruisers were 
in line abreast, visibility distance apart — anything 
from five to ten miles — and each was screened by two 
destroyers. The cruiser on the port wing was Birken- 
head, and the destroyer on her port bow was the 
Oracle, which was therefore outside ship of the whole 
squadron. 

Just before dark, Lieutenant-Commander A. Grendon 
Tippet, R.N., commanding Oracle, was informed that 
very strong German wireless from two different sources 
was being intercepted ; and as one of the sources was 
evidently near by, he decided to keep all hands closed 
up to their quarters throughout the night. Nothing, 
however, happened until broad daylight, when, at about 
6 a.m., Lieutenant Claude Butlin, officer of the watch, 
sighted a vessel on the horizon. No one else on the 
bridge could see it, but Mr. Butlin reported it, and his 
captain, who knew his exceptional alertness and powers 
of vision, ordered t him to continue the look-out and report 



THE DESTROYERS 203 

again. Shortly afterwards the vessel was sighted by the 
midshipman and the signalman of the watch, and was 
pronounced to be a trawler. 

But a few minutes after this Mr. Butlin saw a bow 
and stern lift out of the water, well to left and right of 
the vessel's sail, and decided that she was a submarine. 
He at once informed his commander, who ordered full 
speed, course to be altered, and the proper signals to 
be made. The sail then disappeared, and the submarine's 
conning-tower became clearly visible, at a distance of 
something under seven miles. 

At 6.7 the U-boat dived. The alarm had evidently 
been given, and it was not likely that she would be 
seen again on the surface; so at 6.10 Lieutenant-Com- 
mander Tippet slowed down. But at 6.13 the sub- 
marine unexpectedly broke surface less than three miles 
away on the port bow ; her conning-tower, or part 
of it, could be seen moving fast through the water in 
a cloud of spray. She submerged again in 10 seconds, 
and Oracle's course was at once altered to cut her off. 
At 6.15 the enemy reappeared once more. Her bows 
shot up out of the water at a steep angle, about half a 
mile ahead. Oracle's course was instantly altered one 
point to port, telegraphs were put to full speed, and the 
forecastle gun was ordered to fire common shell at the 
conning-tower, which was then the only object visible. 
The U-boat just then lifted her stern out of water, 
showing a large vertical rudder on top of it, and the 
gunner's point of aim was shifted accordingly. Four 
rounds were fired, but the target was a very difficult 
one and was not hit. 

At 6.15 events happened and orders were given in 
very rapid succession. The U-boat was apparently not 



204 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

inclined to dive and risk paravanes or depth-charges. 
Lieutenant-Commander Tippet no sooner grasped this 
than he changed his tactics, and determined to ram. 
It was, of course, desirable to strike the enemy at right 
angles, and he endeavoured to con his ship so as to 
secure this position. He gave the orders ' Prepare 
to ram' and 'Secure the depth-charge,' and steadied 
the ship on a point midway between the sub- 
marine's conning-tower (the top of which was just 
showing) and the stern, which was about four feet 
out of water. Then, at 27 knots, he drove Oracle 
straight at her. 

The crash came with lightning speed. At 6.17 
Oracle cut into the submarine's back, exactly in the 
desired spot. It was, at the moment, inclined down- 
wards at an angle of 15°, with the top of the conning- 
tower showing on the port side of the destroyer, and on 
the starboard side about three feet of the freeboard at 
the stern. The impact was heavy, and two officers on 
Oracle's deck, who had not ' prepared to ram ' by taking 
a completely prone position, were flung forward several 
feet. At the same moment an explosion was heard 
astern. It leaped into the Commander's mind that this 
was either a paravane detonating, or his own depth- 
charge, which he had ordered to be secured, with the 
object of avoiding any chance of a disaster from the 
shock. It was, in fact, the depth-charge that exploded ; 
but in the right way, and not by shock. The order 
had been misreported to the sub-lieutenant in charge 
of the after-quarters — as it reached him, it was ' Let 
go the depth-charge.' This he did personally and 
with great accuracy, a few seconds before ramming, 
so that when the explosion came, Oracle's stern was 



THE DESTROYERS 205 

well clear and no one was injured, except possibly the 
enemy. 

Oracle, having cut through the U-boat, drifted on 
for about 150 yards. The bows of the dying submarine 
appeared momentarily above water, projecting some 
3 feet at an angle of 45°. Then she sank, stern first, in 
137 fathoms. For half a minute the surface showed a 
big bubbling brown disturbance, and in the oil patch 
appeared a quantity of debris, mainly large pieces of 
unpainted cork, whose curved shape suggested that 
they formed part of the lining of the hull. Oracle 
herself was not undamaged, as may be imagined ; her 
bows were smashed from the water-line downwards, 
and a considerable quantity of naval stores were 
floating around her. She reported accordingly by 
searchlight to the Birkenhead, who could just be dis- 
cerned at a distance of ten miles, and then returned 
to her base to refit. 

For this fine piece of work Lieutenant- Commander 
Tippet received the D.S.O., and Acting-Lieutenant 
Butlin the D.S.C. Nine of the crew were also decorated 
or mentioned. 

Here the destroyers were screening a line of war- 
ships, who formed in themselves a fast and powerful 
force. The convoying of slow and unarmed or lightly 
armed ships is a very different business, but it is done 
every day by our destroyers with amazing efficiency and 
success. A good example is the case of the Racoon, 
who destroyed an enemy submarine in the Mediterranean 
while on escort duty. 

In March 1917, the ss. Osmanieh, 4,410 tons gross, 
owned by the Khedivial Mail Company, but chartered 
by the Admiralty, was on passage from Malta to Madras 



206 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

when, at about 5.40 p.m., a hostile submarine was sighted. 
The ship was commanded by Lieutenant Mason, R.N.R., 
and was flying the White Ensign ; she was zigzagging, 
and was escorted by a single destroyer, the Racoon, 
Lieutenant-Commander Kenneth F. Sworder, R.N. 
The weather was fine, the sea calm, and visibility good 
— about eight or nine miles. 

The submarine when sighted was about 1,500 yards 
distant, and two or three points on the OsmanieK s 
starboard bow. Only six feet of her length was visible, 
and she appeared to be drifting ; puffs of blue-grey 
vapour were coming from her, which seemed to hang 
in the air and float away without disappearing. When 
nearer — at 800 to 1,000 yards — she was seen to be moving, 
for a ' feather ' was visible as well as the vapour. 

The Osmanieti s head was put two points to star- 
board to steer for the submarine ; but as it changed 
position rapidly, helm was put hard a-port, the whistle 
was blown to draw the escort's attention, and the alarm 
gong was sounded. The ship then opened fire with her 
two guns. The second round from the after gun appeared 
to score a hit ; but the U-boat was at that time almost 
astern and shining brightly in the sun, so that it was 
not possible to observe with certainty. Racoon, when 
Osmanieh opened fire, was ahead of her, on the port 
bow and going 16 J knots ; but the moment the guns 
were heard, Lieutenant-Commander Sworder increased 
speed to 23 knots, put his helm hard a-port, and sighted 
the U-boat. It had at first ' the appearance of a calcium 
light giving off intermittent puffs of smoke ' ; but when 
the ship's head was turned towards it, a periscope and 
distinct feather were seen, as the submarine came out 
of the trough of the swell. 



THE DESTROYERS 207 

The manoeuvre which followed was a very skilful 
and effective one. Racoon came to meet Osmanieh, 
who had now turned sixteen points to starboard and 
was on the other side of the submarine and overhauling 
her. Osmanieh continued firing till she saw her escort 
only 400 yards from the target. She had intended to 
try a depth-charge herself, and as soon as she passed 
the U-boat she had stopped her port propeller for this 
purpose, hoping to get the ship's stern back into or 
near the enemy's course ; but she now gave this up 
and turned sharply away to port. As she did so, Racoon 
crossed her stern at full speed, and immediately saw the 
submarine on her own starboard side, the periscope 
just showing about five yards off and moving almost 
directly to meet her. Those on the destroyer's deck 
had a glimpse of about ten feet of a grey hull with green 
and rust- coloured marks showing ; then, as the ship 
passed over this, she dropped her starboard depth-charge, 
set to eighty feet, turned swiftly to port and dropped 
her port depth-charge, four seconds after the first. 

Eight or nine seconds passed while Racoon swung 
round on her circle ; then came the two explosions in 
quick succession, throwing up columns of water with 
bits of black debris in them. The ship continued to 
turn to port, and completed nearly two circles round 
the spot, ready to attack again. But nothing more was 
needed, and she may even be said to have witnessed 
the dying breath of her enemy. Some twenty or thirty 
seconds after the explosions, the men stationed in the 
after part of the destroyer, looking over the stern, saw a 
fresh upheaval twenty -five yards or more to the right 
of where the first columns of water had risen. This 
c seemed to come from below as if being pumped up,' 



208 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

and it rose to about a foot above the level of the water, 
making a ripple where the surface had been very calm. 
On examination, it proved to be a fountain of dark 
and very thick brown oil. Racoon and Osmanieh 
proceeded accordingly, leaving that dark and evil- 
smelling blot of oil upon the bright sea to give the ' all 
clear ' to every passing ship. 

Lieutenant-Commander Sworder received the D.S.O. 
on this occasion, Lieutenant Berthon the D.S.C., and 
three men the D.S.M. 

It may be noted that in neither of these two cases did 
the submarine attempt to escape by submerging entirely. 
We can only guess at the reasons. Possibly the U-boat 
which attacked Osmanieh thought she could win in a 
single fight against a lightly armed ship, and was too 
much preoccupied to see Racoon's deadly onset until 
it was too late to avoid it. But Oracle's enemy had 
certainly sufficient time to make her choice between the 
ram and the depth-charge ; and the fact that she decided 
to keep near the surface is very suggestive. The com- 
bination of the hydrophone and the depth-charge is a 
terrible one to contend against. The submarine which 
dives is under the double disability of being both blind 
and audible. The depths of the sea are no safe hiding- 
place for the assassin flying from justice ; given a 
sufficient patrol, his undersea refuge is gone. 

On the other hand, the surface is hardly better, when 
it is covered by an adequate number of destroyers, 
manned by British seamen. The vigilance and decision 
with which they mark and seize their opportunities are 
well shown in the following case of the destruction of a 
submarine in the dead of night. 

Early in May 1917, three destroyers — Miranda, 



THE DESTROYERS 209 

Lance and Milne — were patrolling a well-known area, 
where the enemy has once or twice attempted runaway 
raid 5 under cover of night. This w r as a likely enough 
evening for him; for there was a moon only two days 
past the full, and from time to time a drift of rainy cloud 
across it. To-night, however, it was not with a flurry 
of destroyers that he came, but with a creep of mine- 
layers — U.C. -boats stealing in across the black and silver 
water to lay their deadly eggs clo c e to our barrage. 

One of these was sighted by Lance, and killed by her, 
in the belief of the look-out who were watching from 
Miranda ; but with that one we have nothing to do. 
Another, U.C. 26, is our concern, and about her we know 
all that there is to know. She was travellirg on the 
surface about an hour after midnight — she had finished 
laying her mines, and was heading about east — when 
she suddenly sighted the dark form of an English 
destroyer within a dangerously short distance of her. 
At the same moment Milne — or rather the perfectly 
trained team of men who were the eyes, the brain and 
the heart of her — sighted their enemy. Lieutenant 
Leonard Pearson and leading signalman William 
Smith were the first, and their Commanding Officer, 
Commander V. L. A. Campbell, reports that it was only 
by reason of their exceptional vigilance that the attack 
cou d be so timed as to achieve success. The submarine, 
without losing a moment, dived — or rather attempted 
to dive. But Commander Campbell was as quick as 
his look-out, and his helmsman and engine-room watch 
were as quick as their Commander. A trace of hesita- 
tion^ — an order not caught, or misheard, or obeyed with 
less than absolute precision — and U.C. 26 would have 
been in hiding. But she w T as hardly sighted and reported 



210 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

before the fatal orders were sharply and clearly given. 
Commander Campbell's voice had hardly reached his 
chief petty officer, Frederick Robinson, before the 
helm had brought the ship upon her altered course; and 
even as she turned Ernest Pike and John Reason down 
below were repeating the call for full speed to the chief 
engineer. 

No greater tension can be imagined than that on 
board the two boats during the few interminable seconds 
of the onset. This submarine, at any rate, was not un- 
conscious of her danger. She was wide awake, with 
a possible margin of one second between safety and 
destruction. Her deck was already awash ; only her 
conning-tower was still clear above the surface when 
the destroyer struck her just before it, and cut clean 
through her hull. She took in water in an overwhelming 
rush, and went straight to the bottom. Scarcely had 
she reached it when the pressure of air, increasing as 
the water rose inside her, seemed to give her unhappy 
crew a last forlorn chance of escape. The Captain was 
in the engine-room, so that the exit by the conning- 
tower hatch, which would have been his prerogative, 
was left to the second officer, who succeeded in reaching 
the surface. Of the remaining 26 members of the crew, 
7 got the engine-room hatch open, and 5 at least escaped 
by it ; but only one of the whole number was picked 
up alive. He was a Dane from Schleswig-Holstein, and 
had been pressed for submarine service. 

For this smart piece of work, in every way character- 
istic of our Destroyer Service, Commander V. L. A. 
Campbell received a bar to his D.S.O. Lieutenant L. 
Pearson was awarded the D.S.C., and the other four 
men already mentioned received the D.S.M. 




U,C-boats stealing in across the black and silver water,' 



212 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

The next case is also typical, being a patrol action ; 
but it differs from the last in that the success was due 
to combined work by three destroyers, and not only 
by a single crew. There are also one or two exceptional 
circumstances which distinguish it from other actions 
of a similar kind — the presence of the Rear- Admiral 
commanding the local force, and the additional evidence 
which eventually settled the classification of the result. 

It was on the morning of a day in March 1918 that 
a light-cruiser squadron was cruising in the North 
Sea ; and at 9.25 a.m. three destroyers — Thruster, 
Commander A. D. Gibbs ; 'Retriever ; Commander E. W. 
Taylor; and Sturgeon, Lieutenant-Commander Henry 
Coombs — were ordered to take up a screening position 
ahead of the force. As they were in the act of moving 
to their stations an object was sighted, two points on 
Sturgeon's port bow, and about one mile distant. A 
moment afterwards it was recognised as the conning- 
tower of a submarine. In order to understand what 
followed, it is necessary to have the positions clearly 
before the mind's eye. Thruster and Retriever were 
immediately ahead of the squadron, to starboard and 
port respectively, and Sturgeon was ahead of the flotilla, 
in the act of crossing from starboard to port. She had 
just passed Thruster and was on her port bow, going 
towards a point ahead of Retriever, when she sighted the 
submarine on her own port bow and therefore almost 
enclosed in the triangle formed by the three destroyers. 
The U-boat dived immediately, and Sturgeon fired as 
she did so, but without effect- — a late shot at a dis- 
appearing target. Lieutenant-Commander Coombs at 
once increased to full speed, and altered course to pass 
over the position. He arrived accurately, and in time 



THE DESTROYERS 213 

to sight the track of the submarine as she tried to 
bolt through the only opening left to her, between her 
pursuer and the advancing Retriever. Her under-water 
speed was quite unequal to this effort, and in a moment 
Sturgeon was passing along her track and overhauling 
her. Another moment and the destroyer's depth- 
charges, set to forty feet only, were dropped — one on 
either side of the track and a little ahead of it. 

Sturgeon put her helm over in the usual way to avoid 
the explosion area, but turned again on hearing the 
detonations and had the satisfaction of seeing the U-boat 
shortly afterwards break surface with her bows up at 
an ominously high angle. She was by this time near 
closing Retriever, but Lieutenant-Commander Coombs 
considered her as still his hare. He turned again and 
raced for her like a greyhound. She tried to submerge, 
but could not get down quickly enough. Every one of 
the three destroyers could have rammed her, for as they 
came up to her in succession they could all see some 
thirty feet of her bows, with hydrophones and net- 
cutters, lying almost under them. But there was no 
need to take the risks of a concussion — this w r as a plain 
case for more depth-charges. Sturgeon* as she passed 
over a second time, dropped the remainder of hers. 
Then came Retriever an instant later, with two more ; 
and she also dropped a Dan buoy, to mark the exact 
spot for Thruster, who was coming across from a greater 
distance. By the time Thruster arrived, she found the 
U-boat entirely submerged, but she methodically added 
her two depth-charges and both of them exploded within 
five yards of Retriever's buoy, and probably not more 
from the submarine, which they followed down to 
eighty feet. 



214 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

So far, no one had thought of doubting the success 
of this very well executed triple attack ; and indeed the 
evidence was both strong and plentiful. The U-boat 
was clearly seen to have been damaged by the Sturgeon's 
first two charges, for she reappeared almost at once 
and at an unmistakable angle. The six other charges 
dropped over her were none of them blind shots — 
Sturgeon and Retriever both saw their target plainly, 
and Thruster had the Dan buoy to guide her. The 
Rear- Admiral, in reporting the case, added that he was 
himself a witness of the attack and was of opinion that 
the submarine was destroyed. As corroborative evi- 
dence, he named the following articles, which were picked 
up near the spot : 1 wooden ladder, 1 red kisbie lifebuoy, 
1 calcium float, and 1 steel buoy with fractured wire 
pendant attached. The lifebuoy and calcium float were 
not of British make, and the former was marked 
with letters and numbers not used in our Service. 
Finally, the area round the Dan buoy was thick with 
oil, which came gradually up during the two hours 
succeeding the chase. 

Notwithstanding this evidence, and the opinion of 
so many competent witnesses, the Admiralty rule held 
good. There were no survivors or dead bodies, no 
debris which might not have come from the submarine's 
deck, no certainty that she could not have righted herself 
and crawled home to the repairing yard. The report 
was marked ' Probably sunk, ' and a letter of apprecia- 
tion was directed to be forwarded to each of the three 
commanders, with an intimation that if any subsequent 
information should be received which would cause any 
revision of the classification, the case should be re- 
submitted. Less than seven weeks afterwards the 



THE DESTROYERS 215 

4 subsequent information ' was forthcoming and there- 
upon Lieutenant-Commander Coombs was awarded the 
D.S.O., and ' Mentions ' were given to Commanders 
Taylor and Gibbs, as well as to two ratings from Sturgeon, 
and one rating each from Retriever and Thruster. So 
ends the plain story of what is, to the Destroyer Service, 
a day's work in the ordinary routine. But any other 
Service in the world will tell you that there is nothing 
ordinary about it. 



CHAPTER XIII 

P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 

The trawler is a fishing-boat by birth, and a mine-sweeper 
by necessity ; the destroyer is first of all a fighting 
ship, and a protector of the weak. They will both kill 
a submarine when it comes their way ; but we have 
ships — classes of ships — whose whole profession and 
occupation it is to hunt the pirate. Their methods 
differ as the methods of two kinds of hound. The Q- 
boat hunts slowly and craftily, the P-boat and the 
Yacht Patrol by speed, the ram, and the dreaded depth- 
charge. It U unnecessary to give the technical descrip- 
tion of either class. A yacht is a yacht, and for a P-boat 
you may imagine a long slim boat, with fine lines and a 
rather low freeboard, three officers, a surgeon, and some 
fifty-five men — depth-charges round the stern and a 
gun or two, but no torpedoes. 

In September 1917, H.M.S. P. 61 received orders to 
pick up in a certain roadstead the oiler San Zeferino 
and escort her to her destination. It was no easy job ; 
the San Zeferino "s steering gear was defective, she could 
not zigzag ; and in the misty showers and very dark 
weather prevailing, her course was embarrassingly 
original. But she was a valuable ship, and P. 61 meant 
to get her in if it could be done. 

The sea was moderate, but visibility was no more 

216 



P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 217 

than three-quarters of a mile. P. 61 kept on the con- 
voy's starboard bow and only about two cables ahead, 
zigzagging at seventeen knots. At three minutes to 
six in the morning, the oiler was suddenly observed to 
be settling by the stern. Lieut. -Commander Frank 
Arthur Worsley, R.N.R, on the bridge of P. 61, had 
heard no sound of explosion, and no one in the ship 
had sighted a submarine. The Commander knew, 
however, that in the thick mist and w T ith a head wind 
and wash against him, this was natural enough. He 
immediately circled twice round the convoy, signalling 
to her : ' Have you been torpedoed ? ' With some 
difficulty she replied ' Yes,' and also that she had sighted 
the submarine. 

Lieut.-Commander Worsley ascertained that the 
San Zeferino had her boats swung out and A was in no 
immediate danger. He then reduced speed, in order 
not to betray his presence to the enemy, and started 
off north-west on the chase. Inevitably he soon lost 
sight of the oiler in the fog, and was obliged to turn in 
order to regain touch. He found the convoy still heading 
on her course, though her engines were wrecked ; crossed 
her bows, and passed down her port side and under 
her stern. Directly P. 61 w ? as clear, Lieutenant J. R. 
Stenhouse, R.N.R., on her bridge, sighted the enemy 
about half a mile aw r ay on the starboard beam, heading 
westward at nine knots. 

Action stations had already been sounded, and fire 
was now opened from the port 12-pounder gun. One 
round of common shell was sent into the submarine, 
striking her just before the conning-tower. But a 
gun action was not t e final object of P. 61. Lieut.- 
Commander Worsley had got his engines up to full speed 



218 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

as he came on, and saw that the enemy could not escape 
his ram. So sure was he that, after three minutes' 
run, he deliberately stopped both engines, so as to let 
the ship's bows drop deeper in the water and make a 
better hit. 

The engines stopped, the bows sank two feet, the 
order ' Stand by to ram ' was heard, and P. 61 struck the 
enemy stem on, on the port side, just abaft the conning- 
tower. Her speed at the moment was fully 20 knots, 
and the impact was severe ; the submarine rolled over 
as the stem cut into her; and when P. 61 's stern was 
just above her, a very violent explosion took place, 
giving Lieut. -Commander Worsley, for an instant, the 
nightmare that he had been torpedoed by another U-boat 
in the moment of victory. He was quickly reassured. 
P. 61 had suffered no damage. But round the place 
of collision the sea was boiling with foam ; immense 
air-bubbles were coming to the surface in rushes, and 
continued for some minutes after the explosion. There 
was oil upon the surface, and in it two men struggling. 
Lifebelts were thrown to them, and boats put out. 
One of the two was rescued and proved to be Ober- 
Leutnant Alfred Arnold, the commanding officer of 
the U-boat — the fifth upon the list of 150 published by 
the British Admiralty. The submarine was U.C. 49 
and lies at the bottom in forty-seven fathoms. The 
San Zeferino was taken in tow by P. 61 and came safely 
in after an arduous twelve hours — an admirable piece 
of work. Lieutenant-Commander Worsley received the 
D.S.O., Lieutenant Stenhouse the D.S.C., and two petty 
officers the D.S.M. for excellent steering and gun-laying. 

On this occasion the P-boat had left her patrol duty 
for the moment, to act as escort. This was not the case 



P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 219 

with P. 57, who had a similar success in November of 
the same year. In the dark of early morning, about 
6 o'clock, she had just challenged and examined by 
searchlight a vessel which turned out to be a friend, 
when the forward look-out reported ' Buoy on the 
port bow ! ' Course was altered to examine this buoy, 
and on approaching it both Lieut. -Commander H. C. 
Birnie, R.N.R., in command of P. 57, and Lieutenant 
Isdale, R.N.R., his officer of the watch, simultaneously 
perceived it to be a large U-boat heading due west and 
only 200 yards distant. 

There was less than no time to be lost. Orders were 
given and obeyed instantaneously. The engines leaped 
to full speed as the ship came round sharply to port and 
steered straight for the enemy. In less than fifteen 
seconds the crash came — a heavy impact, at seventeen 
knots, on a point just before the U-boat's conning-tower, 
very nearly at right angles. P. 57 cut her way right 
through, and as she did so the order for the depth- charges 
reached the officer of the watch. The first charge was 
released with great promptitude and precision as the 
damaged submarine passed under the ship's stern. 
P. 57 turned sixteen points and came back over the spot, 
when a second charge was immediately dropped and a 
buoy put down. 

An hour and a half afterwards Lieut. -Commander 
Birnie returned, after verifying his position, and 
found very large quantities of oil rising about fifty 
yards from his buoy. He dropped a third depth-charge 
and another buoy, and patrolled the neighbourhood all 
night. Sweepers arrived next day, located the U-boat 
with a bottom sweep in thirty fathoms, lowered a depth- 
charge on the sweep wire and blew the wreck up. 



220 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

For this ' speedy and faultless attack ' Lieut.-Com- 
mander Birnie received the D.S.O., Lieutenant Isdale 
the D.S.C., and two A.B.'s the D.S.M. 

This feat was a remarkable one, for it was performed 
in almost total darkness ; but success was achieved in 
even more difficult circumstances by P. 51 towards the 
end of March 1918. It was 8.30 in the evening ; the 
sea was calm under the moonlight, but great spaces of 
it were darkened by cloud shadows. The commander, 
Lieutenant William Murray, R.N.R., was in the chart- 
house, and Mr. Whittel, the gunner, on watch, when the 
signalman on the bridge reported a submarine on the 
surface, about one point before the port beam and less 
than 300 yards away. Orders were at once given to 
increase to full speed, and starboard the helm to ram. 
As the ship swung, the commander reached the bridge 
and took charge. He could see the enemy's wash and 
bow wave. Then she appeared more distinctly as a large 
U-boat, 350 feet long, with a huge conning-tower and 
about two feet of freeboard showing. P. 51 continued 
to swing into the desired position and the moment for 
a successful ram seemed to have arrived. Then occurred 
one of those sudden and unforeseen accidents which 
try a commander's presence of mind and decision to the 
utmost. To strike the U-boat fair it was, of course, 
necessary to put the helm over as soon as P. 51's head 
had swung far enough to be pointing for her, and so 
steady the ship on her course. But this order could not 
be obeyed — the helm had jammed. Lieutenant Murray 
knew that to struggle with it could only at best result 
in a bungling collision which would injure his own ship 
rather than the enemy. He made a lightning act 
of renunciation, kept his helm a-starboard and swung 



P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 221 

completely round, passing close along the submarine's 
side aid then turning altogether away from her. The 
helm was soon afterwards found to be acting again ; 
but in the meantime P. 51 had lost sight of the enemy. 

She dashed westwards, and in two minutes sighted 
the U-boat again, a mile away on the port quarter. A 
new ramming attack was immediately planned, and the 
guns were ordered to open fire ; but the submarine 
dived completely before they could pick her up in the 
uncertain light. In ten seconds Lieutenant Murray 
had brought P. 51 over a patch of oil which betrayed the 
spot where the U-boat was submerging. Three depth- 
charges followed her down. The first two produced the 
usual upheaval of water, but the third blew a quantity 
of wreckage into the air, of many shapes and sizes. 
P. 51 continued to circle around, and ten minutes 
later three shocks were felt below in rapid succession. 
Nothing more was seen, nor could any movement be 
heard on the hydrophone. 

The official verdict was one of ' Probably sunk,' 
the evidence being considered good but inconclusive. 
It was, however, afterwards supplemented by final 
proof, and the case was re-marked ' Known.' Lieutenant 
Murray accordingly received the D.S.C. and two of his 
men the D.S.M. 

Very little information has been given to the public 
about the Yacht Patrol ; but it is certain that, when all 
is known, the history of this service will be eagerly read. 
There is a fine Elizabethan air about the gift of a ship 
to the Navy by a private owner, and we can imagine 
how keenly the giver would follow the career of his own 
boat, longing to command her himself, and glorying to 
catch her name now and then through the gales and 



222 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

rumours and gun-fire of the seas, where she is at last 
flying the white ensign. Such a gift was the Prize, 
who with the heroic Sanders, her Commander, lies 
fathoms deep, and still unknown to many ; but in time 
to come she will be remembered with Farnborough, 
Pargust and Dunraven, and her owner's name will 
stand in a unique and honourable list. 

Among the victories of the Yacht Patrol, one of the 
most timely and decisive was that of May 26, 1918. 
H.M. Yacht 024, Lorna, Lieutenant C. L. Tottenham, 
R.N.R.,was on patrol that day in Lyme Bay, intercepting 
east-bound traffic, and keeping an eye at the same time 
on the activities of a U-boat off Portland Bill, whom 
she intended to deal with when opportunity should offer. 
Soon after 8.0 in the evening, she spoke two ships in 
succession, the Jabiru and War Cross, and ordered 
them both into Weymouth Bay, warning them at the 
same time of the enemy submarine. At 8.50 p.m. a 
lamentable signal came back by wireless — ' S.O.S., 
S.S.S.S., 2 miles S.W. of Portland Bill, ss. Jabiru, 
torpedoed.' 

Lorna immediately proceeded at full speed, to look 
for the sinking ship and give what assistance might be 
possible. But, at 9.14 p.m., she intercepted the reassur- 
ing message — ' Proceeding to port, torpedo missed fire.' 
Lieutenant Tottenham at the same moment saw that 
War Cross, which had parted only twenty-five minutes 
before, had now turned and was steering westward, 
having evidently also received the S.O.S. signal from 
Jabiru. He altered course and spoke her accordingly, 
advising her captain to lay the land, and endeavour to 
round the Bill inside the U-boat's operating radius. 
He also offered to go with him as escort, but War Cross 



P-POATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 223 

pluckily declined, thinking he could do better by waiting 
for darkness and running in by himself. 

Lieutenant Tottenham left him and searched the 
horizon for another smoke streamer. His game was to 
meet every ship which came that way and by closing them 
one after another, in the falling dusk, to ensure being 
within striking distance when the U-boat should make 
the next attempt at assassination. The only success 
which could satisfy him would be the destruction of the 
enemy before he had had time to strike the ' live bait ' — 
an ambition which showed great nerve, and a grasp of 
the principle of the offensive in war. It would have 
been easy to make all merchantmen give the Bill a wide 
berth, and perhaps save the next ten of them thereby ; 
but the pest would be active again to-morrow, in the 
same place or another — destruction, at all risks, is the 
only cure for U-boats. 

Before long another ship was seen approaching from 
the south, and Lorna at once headed towards her. 
But after steaming for about three and a half miles 
on this errand, Lieutenant Tottenham perceived that 
the new-comer was already in good hands, or would soon 
be so — the armed drifter Evening Primrose was closing 
her, evidently with the intention of acting as escort. 
At this moment a fresh ship came in sight, approaching 
the Bill from the west. Lieutenant Tottenham instantly 
altered course and made straight for her. 

At 9.55 p.m., when he had hardly steadied Lorna on 
her new course, he sighted the periscope of a submarine. 
It was steering due west, almost directly towards the 
approaching steamer, and seeing the position of the two 
ships, and their con\ erging courses, he assumed rightly 
that the enemy was manoeuvring for an attack of the 



224 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

usual kind, without warning. Of Lorna's presence the 
"U-boat was apparently quite unaware, though she was 
now only 150 feet distant and rapidly coming up on the 
starboard side of the periscope. 

But aware or unaware, the pirates were doomed — 
caught in the act, and helpless as they had thought to 
find their victim. Lorna's helm flew over to starboard. 
The ship swung, in one swift curve, through the interven- 
ing fifty yards, and in two minutes from sighting her, 
enemy she was right over the periscope. The U-boat 
dipped, but far too late ; as Lorna passed over the spot a 
shuddering jar was felt throughout her — her keel had 
struck the conning-tower, but so lightly that the pirates 
below probably thought they had escaped destruction 
for this time. A moment later they knew their error. 
Down came Lorna's first depth-charge, set to fifty feet. 
The helm went over still further to starboard, and the 
second charge dropped about fifty feet from the first, 
and at the same depth. 

Both charges detonated, and it was impossible 
to believe that they could have failed to destroy or 
seriously cripple the U-boat. They must have exploded 
in the most dangerous way possible, just alongside and 
underneath the target, where the resistance would be 
the maximum. The proof came a few moments after- 
wards. While continuing his circle, in order to pass 
again over the spot and make sure, Lieutenant Totten- 
ham suddenly sighted four objects in the water among 
the disturbance caused by the two explosions. He 
turned and steered direct for the place, expecting to 
find wreckage of some kind ; but on arriving, at 
full speed, he saw an astonishing tumult of water, 
caused by an upward rush of air, gas, and oil, which 



P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 225 

showed beyond doubt that the U-boat was immediately 
below. 

The next moment was a terrible one. As Lorna's 
third depth-charge dropped into this seething cauldron, 
cries of ' Kamerad ! ' were heard, and those on the 
yacht's deck, looking back as she raced over, saw the 
new explosion hurl into the air the bodies of four men, 
who for a brief instant had been survivors from the 
sunken U-boat. Lieutenant Tottenham eased down 
and returned to pick them up. One was found still 
crying ' Help ! ' and ' Kamerad ! ' but the other three 
were already dead, from the effect of the explosion, or 
of the thick mass of oil in which they were submerged. 
About the unhappy prisoner there was no doubt. 
He was seriously injured internally, and was gone in 
three hours' time. He lived and died in a cruel and 
cowardly business, but if care and kindness could have 
saved him, Lorna would have brought him into port 
and been glad to do it. 

This submarine was U.B. 74. She was a week out, 
and had already sunk three ships when she was caught. 
Her commander was Ober-Leutnant Schtiendorf, and 
his name will be found in the list of the 150, for his case 
was among those marked as ' Known.' 

One more patrol story must be added — a story in 
some ways unique, with mysterious details which haunt 
the imagination, but can never be finally explained. 
The vessels of the patrol on this occasion were not 
yachts, or P-boats in the strict sense of the classification. 
One was the Sarba, an armed trawler like those we have 
already met, and commanded by Lieutenant George G. 
Astbury, R.N.R. ; the other was a small boat, with no 
name but T.B. 055, commanded by Gunner T.H. Britton. 

Q 



226 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

On the morning of October 31, 1917, T.B. 055 was 
accompanying the trawlers who were engaged in sweep- 
ing an important channel outside a British harbour. 
At 3.0 p.m. when the sweep was practically over, Mr. 
Britton noticed an oil track on the surface of the channel. 
This was in itself an astonishing sight, and not to be 
accounted for in a moment. How could a submarine 
have ventured into a channel only thirteen fathoms 
deep, and daily swept by a highly efficient force of 
trawlers ? And for what possible reason could she be 
lying there on the bottom at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 
in a position where she could use none of her weapons, 
and was certain to be found and attacked ? 

Mr. Britton went into the oil track to investigate ; 
stopped his boat and listened on the hydrophone. 
His astonishment was redoubled — the submarine was 
there, and not only there, but busy and audible. The 
case was so extraordinary that he and his trained 
hydrophone listener took counsel together and classified 
the sounds they heard. First there were the usual 
6 water noises ' ; these were continuous and perfectly 
familiar. Secondly, there was an almost continuous 
high-pitched sound, somewhat similar to that of a 
turbine engine running. Thirdly, at intervals of a few 
seconds, came a noise as of knocking or hammering 
upon metal ; the speed of the tapping varied from slow 
to fairly rapid blows. Lastly — and this was the most 
unexpected and mysterious of all — on two occasions 
there was audible, over all the other noises, a sound as 
of wireless letters on a high musical note. 

For three minutes these sounds were heard, noted, 
and compared. T.B. 055 was then taken forward 
about 200 yards, to the end of the oil track, and the 



P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL 227 

hydrophone was used again. Precisely the same 
sounds were heard, except that this time the musical 
note, as of a wireless message, was not repeated. Mr. 
Britton had no desire to lose time; but he was not 
troubled with nerves, and he was determined to make 
sure of his evidence. He took precautions to stop all 
ship's noises. The fact only became clearer that the 
sounds below came from a live submarine. What 
her crew were doing no one could know ; but she was 
there for an evil purpose, and she must pay the penalty. 
The oil was still coming up in a visible thin stream 
from below the surface. T.B. 055 dropped a Reindeer 
buoy with moorings, to mark the spot exactly, got under 
way and came back over the position. As she passed, 
a depth-charge was dropped. The tide was fairly slack 
at the time, and there was every reason to believe that 
it found the target. Mr. Britton returned to the spot 
once more. The volume of oil rising had now increased, 
and a strong smell of oil fuel was noticed, which had 
not been there before. The blobs of oil which now 
came to the surface had brownish air- bubbles and froth 
among them ; in the hydrophone, nothing wa« to be 
heard but the ordinary water noises. 

It was now 3.35 p.m., and the armed trawler Sarba 
was seen approaching. Mr. Britton reported what he 
had been doing to Lieutenant Astbury, who at once 
stopped his own engines and used his hydrophone. 
Then, as he too could hear no sign of life, he took a sound- 
ing, found sixteen fathoms and a sandy bottom, and 
decided that the enemy must be still there, alive or 
dead. Accordingly he steamed clear of the position, 
turned and came back over it at full speed. He deter- 
mined to set his depth-charge for eighty feet, in spite of 



228 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the shallowness of the water, because, with the boat on 
the bottom at ninety-six feet, he would be absolutely 
certain of getting a very close explosion. The charge 
detonated, and he returned at once to the spot. Large 
bubbles of air and quantities of oil were coming up, and 
within a short time the oil was covering a very wide 
area. Sarba stood by all night, using her hydrophone 
frequently. 

It was now evident that the enemy was dead ; but 
the more the circumstances were reflected upon, the 
more difficult it was to explain them. Next morning, 
when T.B, 055 had i proceeded to sea in accordance with 
programme,' Lieutenant Astbury, in Sarba, was left 
alone, with nothing but two buoys and an oil patch to 
give so incredible a story any kind of reality. He got 
out a sweep wire with a sinker of If cwt. and took a 
sweep along the position. The sweep brought up on 
an immovable obstruction, and the incredible seemed 
once more possible. At 2.0 p.m. arrived the armed 
drifter Sunshine and T.B. 058. They found Sarba 
lying as near as possible in the position where she had 
exploded her depth-charge, and where her sweep had 
brought her up. They took a ground sweep under her, 
and their sweep wire also fouled the same obstruction. 
Sarba, like a faithful dog, remained on guard during the 
following night. At last, at 2.30 p.m. on November 2. 
the divers arrived. 

Before the day was out, all uncertainty was removed. 
The diver who first went down found the submarine 
lying on her side. When visited a second time, she had 
been righted by the tide or some shifting of weight ; but 
she and all her crew were dead. The main fact was thus 
proved ; but the mystery remained and still remains 




No«M'WWi[j < *M10'''~ 



The diver who first went down found the submarine lying on her side. 



230 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

inexplicable and haunting. Possibly the answer, to 
the first of the two questions involved, may be a simple 
one. The U-boat may have got into the channel in a 
fog, and finding herself there when the weather cleared, 
she may have dived for safety and decided to remain 
on the bottom till it was dark enough to steal away. 
But the sounds cannot be explained to the satisfaction 
of those who know most about submarine war. The 
U-boat commander must have realised the enormous 
risk he was incurring, when he allowed those noises to be 
made at such an hour of day. He must have known 
that the British Patrol is well equipped with hydro- 
phones, with depth-charges, and with sweeps. Either 
he had some serious injury to repair, and no time to 
wait ; or else his boat was completely disabled at the 
bottom, and the hammering and other noises were the 
desperate attempts of the crew to draw attention in the 
hope of being rescued. ' There is also,' said the Admiral 
of the station, ' the third possibility, that the boat 
carries inside her a tragedy that will never be known.' 



CHAPTER XIV 

Q-BOATS. — 

Everyone who has ever thought about war must know 
that secrecy is one of the first conditions of military 
success, whether on land or sea. Yet the secrecy prac- 
tised by our Government and our Higher Command 
has often been the subject of complaint. The com- 
plaint is not the cry of mere sensationalism or curiosity, 
deprived of its ration of news. Often it is the most 
patriotic and intelligent who are the most distressed at 
being kept in the dark. They understand the dangers 
of a great war, and they desire, above all things, not 
to live in a fool's paradise. They know that they can 
bear to hear the worst, and they feel that they de- 
serve to hear the best. The anti-submarine campaign 
has especially tried their patience. There has been great 
anxiety to know the exact figures of our mercantile 
losses ; and on the other hand, when naval honours have 
been given without the usual account of the actions by 
which they were earned, there has been a tendency 
to grumble that we are not being helped to bear the 
strain of war, even when events are in our favour. 

These complaints are not justified . Those who make 
them have failed to realise the deadly earnestness of 
the struggle we are carrying on. It is hard on the 
patriotic student of war that we should go short of 

231 



232 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

facts, and hard on the anxious that they should lack 
encouraging information ; but how much harder would 
it be for our seamen and submarine crews, if the secret 
of their tactics were given away to an enemy only too 
quick to take advantage of what he can succeed in 
overhearing ? When one interesting paragraph in a 
newspaper may possibly mean the sacrifice of many 
lives, what statesman or staff officer would take the 
responsibility of passing it for publication ? But the 
secrets of the Admiralty in this war have not been 
timidly or unintelligently kept. In spite of the tradition 
of ' the Silent Service ' — which only means that ' the 
Navy doesn't advertise ' — there is no general feeling 
against telling the truth and the whole truth, when it 
can be done to the advantage of the country. Those in 
power have been for the most part in favour of 4 taking 
the lid off ' when the right time has come ; and in 
this very matter of the mysterious honours, it was the 
First Lord himself who at last told the public what 
could no longer be valuable information for the enemy. 
So long as the use of disguised Special Service ships, 
or Q-boats, was a new method, indispensable to us 
and unsuspected by the Germans, or at least unfamiliar 
to them, so long was it highly undesirable that we 
should speak or write publicly of their successes. But 
now that after many losses, and some escapes, from 
Q-boats, the enemy's submarine service has found out 
all their secrets, our own Navy has naturally ceased to 
rely on this kind of surprise, and has invented new 
devices, even more deadly and more difficult to evade. 
Of these we are, very reasonably, forbidden to write ; 
but of the old and well-known hunting methods — of 
the work of destroyers, patrol-boats, trawlers, sub- 



Q-BOATS 233 

marines, aircraft and Q-boats — we may now give illus- 
trations ; for we shall be telling nothing that the enemy 
does not know to his cost already. The very name, 
Q-boat, is as familiar in Germany as in this country. 
The submarine which escaped from the Dunraven carried 
away a very complete understanding of the work of 
these Special Service ships, and the Illustrierte Zeitung 
of July 12, 1917, contained a full description of a 
fight between a U-boat and a 'submarine trap,' 
which took place on February 22 of that year. 

It is evident from this, and other articles of a simi- 
lar kind, that, in German opinion, it is the U-boats, 
and not their victims, who have the right to complain 
of barbarous treatment. This view is amazing ; but it 
is in complete accordance with the principle laid down 
by Major-General von Disfurth, in the Hamburger 
NachiHchten, at the begining of the War s ' We owe no 
explanations to anyone : there is nothing for us to 
justify, and nothing for us to explain away. Every 
act, of whatever nature, committed by our troops for 
the purpose of discouraging, defeating and destroy- 
ing our enemies, is a brave act, a good deed, and fully 
justified. Germany stands supreme, the arbiter of 
her own methods, which must in time of war be dic- 
tated to the world.' That is the insolence of unmiti- 
gated brutality, and the British Navy took up the 
challenge with a spirit that will set the standard of 
the world so long as war remains a possibility in human 
life. If our men had retaliated on barbarians by 
methods of barbarism, neither the German Govern- 
ment, as Sir Edward Grey pointed out, nor the German 
people, would have had any just ground for complaint. 
' It is not in consideration for their deserts that the 



234 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Admiralty reject such a policy. They reject it because 
it is inconsistent with the traditions of the Service for 
which they are responsible ; nor do they now propose 
to alter their methods of warfare merely because they 
find themselves in conflict with opponents whose views 
of honour and humanity are different from their own.' 
But within the old rules, the rules of law and chivalry, 
they are right to use every device that native ingenuity 
and centuries of experience can suggest. There is no 
German cunning that cannot be matched by British 
science and discipline, and no German brutality that 
cannot be overmatched by British daring and endur- 
ance. This has been proved a hundred times in the 
course of the submarine war, and never more brilli- 
antly than by the captains of the Q-boats, of whom 
the pattern for all time is Gordon Campbell, till yester- 
day known only as ' The Mystery Star Captain ' of the 
British Navy. 

In 1915, Gordon Campbell was just one of the many 
Lieutenant-Commanders who had never had an oppor- 
tunity for distinguished service. His hopes rose when 
he was appointed to command the Farnborough, a 
Special Service ship, formerly a collier, with crew mainly 
drawn from the mercantile marine and R.N.R. Into 
these men he infused his own ideas of discipline and 
training, as well as his own cool and selfless courage. 
During the whole winter the Farnborough faced the 
gales without a single fight to cheer her ; bat never for 
a moment did her commander waver in his faith that 
her chance would come, and never did his men cease 
to give him their whole trust and devotion. In the 
end, he was able to say of them that they understood 
every move in the game as well as he himself did, and 



Q-BOATS 235 

played it with the same keenness. Even if he had met 
with no other success, this alone was an achievement, 
and a proof of invaluable power. But other successes 
were to be added — the power was to be felt beyond 
his own ship, as an example and an inspiration. 

The Farnborough' s first chance came in the spring of + 
1916, when she was tramping quietly along at eight 
knots. Her look-out sighted the enemy at last — a sub- 
marine awash, and about five miles distant on the port 
bow. It remained in view only for a few minutes and 
then dived, no doubt for the attack. It was the 
Farnbor 'oughts part to be blind, stupid, and generally 
mercantile. She maintained her course and speed as 
if she had observed nothing. Twenty minutes later 
a torpedo was seen coming up on the starboard 
quarter. The bubbles rose right under the forecastle, 
the torpedo having evidently passed just ahead of the 
ship. The Farnborough maintained her course, as blind 
and trampish as before. 

A few minutes more, and the U-boat, convinced 
that she had a fool to deal with, broke surface only a 
thousand yards astern of the ship, passing across her 
wake from starboard to port. But she was not exactly 
in a mood of reckless courage — she fired a shot from 
her gun across Farnborough' *s bows, and at the same 
time partially submerged. Now came the moment 
for which Lieutenant-Commander Campbell had trained 
his men. He stopped, blew off steam ostentatiously, 
and ordered a ' panic abandon ship ' by his stokers 
and spare men, under Engineer Sub-Lieutenant John 
Smith, R.N.R. The U-boat was encouraged by this, 
closed to 800 yards, and a few seconds later reopened 
fire with a shell which fell about fifty yards short. Then, 



286 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

in the traditional style of the old Navy, the captain 
gave the order to hoist the white ensign and open fire. 

The surprise was complete and overwhelming ; the 
pirate made no fight of it at all. Farnborough fired 
twenty-one rounds from her three 12 -pounders, one of 
the guns getting off 13 rounds to her own share ; and 
the Maxims and rifles also expended some 200 car- 
tridges. The range was long, considering the bad light, 
but several hits were observed before the submarine 
disappeared. She went down slowly. Lieutenant-Com- 
mander Campbell steamed full speed over the spot and 
dropped a depth-charge. Immediately the U-boat re- 
appeared. She was only ten yards off the ship, and 
rose in a nearly perpendicular position, being out of the 
water from the bow to abaft the conning -tower. She 
had had one periscope hit, and there was a large rent 
in her bow, through which no doubt the water had 
penetrated and run down into her stern compartment, 
giving her her unnatural position. All this was re- 
membered and told afterwards. Her reappearance was 
instantly greeted with five more rounds from the Farn- 
borough' s after -gun. They all went into the base of 
the conning -tower at point-blank range, and she sank 
at once. Oil, not in driblets but in very large quantities, 
came rapidly to the surface, mixed with pieces of wood, 
and covered the sea for some distance round. Farn- 
borough collected her boats and stokers, and reported 
her success — a success insured, as was noted on her 
report, by 4 good nerve and thorough organisation. 5 

Three weeks afterwards, she heard of a U-boat 
operating on a definite pitch of her own, and set out 
to put temptation in her way. In the evening, as she 
was going warily along at five knots, on a calm and 



Q-BOATS 237 

misty sea, she observed a ship on her starboard quarter, 
about two miles distant. Then suddenly, between 
the two vessels, a submarine broke surface. The blind 
old Farnborough plodded on, taking no notice till the 
U-boat hoisted a signal, which Commander Campbell 
could not read. He stopped, however, and blew off 
steam, with his answering pendant at the dip. He also 
hoisted the signal ' Cannot understand your signal,' 
but kept jogging ahead, so as to edge in, and to avoid 
falling into the trough of the heavy swell. The U-boat 
was lying full length on the surface. She was a large 
boat and had two guns on deck, but no men visible. 

Presently she began to close, and manned her 
foremost gun. In the meantime Commander Campbell 
had turned out the bridge boat and given his ' papers ' 
to Engineer Sub -Lieu tenant John Smith, R.N.R., to 
take over to the submarine. At this moment the 
enemy fired a shot, which passed over the ship, and one 
of the Farnborough? s gunners, thinking that his own 
ship had opened the engagement, began to fire himself. 
This forced Commander Campbell's hand ; he ran up 
the white ensign, gave the general order to open fire, 
and went full speed ahead to bring his after -gun to bear. 
The range was a long one for a misty evening — 900 
to 1,000 yards — but the shooting was good enough. 
The second shot was seen by the neutral sailors on 
the other ship to strike the U-boat directly ; her bow 
submerged and her stern came up out of the water so 
that her propellers were visible, and one of them could 
be seen to be higher than the other. She lay in this 
position for a good five minutes, and altogether 20 
rounds were fired at her from the Farnborough' s 12- 
pounders, the last two of which hit either on the conning- 



238 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

tower or just forward of it. Then there appeared to be an 
explosion on board the U-boat, and she sank suddenly. 
There was a great commotion on the water, and a cloud 
of dense steam or vapour covered the surface for some 
minutes. Farnborough passed over the spot and dropped 
two depth-charges ; but the submarine had gone to 
the bottom in 81 fathoms and nothing more was seen 
of her. The neutral ship afterwards observed a large 
patch of oil upon the surface. She had behaved with 
strict neutrality, and was good enough to remain 
some time -on the spot, ' looking for drowneds,' but 
she looked in vain. 

By the destruction of these two U-boats, Commander 
Campbell and his ship's company had done valuable 
service, and had given remarkable proof of what can be 
accomplished by discipline and nerve. But the very 
efficiency and success of their work gave a deceptive 
appearance to it. The fighting was so smartly done, 
and so conclusive, that it looked an easier thing than it 
really was, to trap and sink a brace of pirates in three 
weeks. The enemy was not long in perceiving that the 
trade of murder was being rapidly made more difficult 
and more dangerous for him. Every time a U-boat 
came home, the need for caution was more strongly 
impressed upon the directors of the campaign. 

The German Press was instructed to complain that 
the unscrupulous British Navy was using disguised 
ships and de~>th-charges against the Power which ' stands 
supreme, the arbiter of her own methods,' and has 
alone the right to dress her Greifs and Moewes as un- 
armed neutral trading vessels. At the same time the 
pirate captains were ordered to be less rash in approach- 
ing ships they had torpedoed but had not sunk outright. 



Q-BOATS 289 

The result was to make Commander Campbell's next 
encounter a much more anxious affair, and it was 
only by his incredible patience and judgment, and the 
wonderful discipline of his crew, that their third victory 
was achieved. As to the courage of every one con- 
cerned, it would be waste of time to speak of it. Courage 
of the finest quality was the very breath which these 
men breathed — all day, and every day. 

One morning, then, early in 1917, the Special Service 
ship Q. 5 was going due east at 7 knots, when a torpedo 
was seen approaching her starboard beam. This was 
what Commander Campbell was out for — in the present 
timid state of the pirates' nerves, there was no hope of 
drawing any of them into a fight, except by getting 
torpedoed outright, to start with. They might approach 
a sinking ship — they would no longer venture to come 
near a live one. But, at the same time, one need not 
make the handicap unnecessarily heavy. Commander 
Campbell valued his men's lives at least as much as 
his own, and he did his best to save his heroic engine- 
room staff, who faced the worst of the danger with 
perfect understanding and perfect self-sacrifice . He 
put his helm hard aport, and was so far successful that 
he received the torpedo in No. 3 hold ; but, to his regret, 
it burst the bulk-head between that hold and the engine- 
room and slightly wounded Engineer Sub -Lieutenant 
John Smith, R.N.R. Help, he knew, was not far off ; 
but no signal was sent out, for fear some zealous ship 
might arrive before Q. 5 had done her work. 'Action' 
was sounded, and all hands went quietly to stations 
previously arranged for such an emergency. Every 
man, except those required on board for the fight, then 
abandoned ship — two lifeboats and one dinghey full 



240 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

were sent away, and a fourth boat was partially lowered 
with a proper amount of confusion. The chief engineer 
reported the engine-room filling with water. He was 
ordered to hang on as long as possible, and then hide. 
While all this was going on — and a most masterly 
piece of acting it was, the whole company playing 
perfectly together — the U-boat was observed on the 
starboard quarter watching the proceedings through 
his periscope. His carcass he was loth to expose, but 
he came past the ship on the starboard side, only five 
yards from the lifeboats, and ten from the ship ; so 
close, in fact, that though still submerged, the whole 
hull of the submarine could be seen distinctly through 
the water. The temptation to fire was almost un- 
bearable. But the effect upon the U-boat at that 
depth was very doubtful, and there would be no time 
for a second shot before he slid down out of reach. 
Commander Campbell made no sign, and his gunners 
lay as steady as if his hand were upon them. 

Their patience was repaid. Twenty minutes after 
firing his torpedo, the enemy passed across the ship's 
bow and ventured to the surface to finish her off. He 
was 300 yards away on the port bow when Q. 5 made 
the signal l Torpedoed.' He then came down past 
the port side on the surface, captain on conning-tower, 
ready to give sentence of death on his victim. But as 
he came onto the precise bearing on which all Q. 5's 
guns could bear, Commander Campbell gave the order 
to open fire at point-blank range. 

The 6-pounder got in first, with a shell which hit 
the conning-tower and removed the pirate captain's 
head . The U-boat never recovered from the surprise but 
lay on the surface while the British gunners shattered 




A fourth boat was partially lowered with a proper amount of confusion.' 



242 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

his hull. The conning-tower was naturally the chief 
mark. It was repeatedly hit, some of the shells going 
apparently clean through it. When the boat sank, the 
conning-tower was shattered and lay completely open, 
with the crew trying to escape by it to the deck. Com- 
mander Campbell ordered ' Cease fire,' and sent one 
of his lifeboats to their assistance. But the swirl of the 
sinking vessel, and the density of the oil which poured 
out of her, proved immediately fatal to those who had 
succeeded in reaching the water. One officer was picked 
up alive, and one man. 

Commander Campbell then recalled his boats and 
inspected his ship, with what feelings only a seaman 
can imagine. He found that Q. 5 was sinking by the 
stern. The engine- and boiler-rooms were rapidly filling, 
and the water was also pouring into three holds. After 
making the signal for assistance, he placed all hands 
in the boats, except a chosen few whom he kept on 
board with him ; and as the case was desperate, he 
gave orders for the destruction of all confidential 
books and charts. 

An hour and a half later the Narwhal arrived, and 
took all the crew on board. Commander Campbell 
himself — dead set on saving his ship if it could be done — 
inspected her once more, and then went over to the 
Narwhal to discuss the possibility of towage. Shortly 
afterwards the Buttercup came up, and as Q. 5 seemed 
by now to have assumed a more stable position and the 
water was gaining more slowly, Commander Campbell 
ordered Buttercup to take her in tow, which was done 
in the most seamanlike manner. It was a long and 
difficult business, almost desperate at times. First the 
tow parted, owing to Q. 5's helm being jammed hard 



Q-BOATS 243 

over and immovable — the result of explosion. But 
her commander was not defeated. He was hard at work 
raising steam in her donkey-boiler, so as to be able to 
steer and veer cable. After four hours he got her in 
tow again, and she towed fairly well. But water was 
still gaining ; the swell was breaking over the decks, 
and the after gun-house was at times under water. 

Another ship, Laburnum, was now standing by, and 
at dusk suggested that Commander Campbell and his 
men should come on board for the night ; but they 
refused to give up their ship as long as they could steer 
her. About two hours after midnight the end seemed 
to have come ; Q. 5 suddenly started to list, the water 
gained rapidly, the donkey boiler-room was flooded, 
and the helm could no longer be used. At 3.30 Com- 
mander Campbell put the helm amidships, and ordered 
his men aboard Laburnum. He then followed himself, 
but returned to his own ship at daybreak and resumed 
towing ; then, finding her in a very critical condition, 
he was compelled to go back to Laburnum for the time. 

In the evening, when they were at last nearing port, 
the trawler Luneta came out to help. Q. 5 had by now 
nearly twenty degrees of list, and her stern was nearly 
eight feet under water ; but she was brought in after all, 
and we may take her commander's word for it that her 
safe arrival in harbour was due to the splendid seaman- 
ship of Lieutenant-Commander W. W. Hallwright of 
the Laburnum. In an achievement like this, there is 
a romantic touch of the old tradition — it was by just 
such seamanship that our frigate captains saved the 
Fleet after Trafalgar. 

We may hear, too, what the commander of Q. 5 said 
about his officers and crew. ' They may almost be 



244 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

said to have passed through the supreme test of 
discipline. The chief-engineer and the engine-room 
watch remained at their posts and kept the dynamos 
going until driven out by water. They then had to 
hide on top of the engine-room. The guns' crews had 
to remain concealed in their gun-houses for nearly half 
an hour, while we could feel the ship going down by 
the stern. At that time it appeared touch-and-go 
whether the ship would sink before we sank the enemy. 
The officers and men who remained on board during 
the towing also did splendidly, the conditions at times 
being most dangerous ... it is difficult to select in- 
dividuals where all did so well.' But without select- 
ing, we may name two by their names : Engineer - 
Lieutenant L. S. Loveless, R.N.R., and Lieutenant 
Ronald Stuart, R.N.R , First and Gunnery Lieutenant, 
both now members of the Distinguished Service Order. 
It is hardly necessary to add that their commander 
received the Victoria Cross. He was born for it. 

It is not often that any man, or any ship's company, 
can repeat their best performance and better it ; yet 
Commander Campbell's third victory was followed by 
a fourth, of which, as the Admiral on his station said 
truly, it is difficult to speak in sober terms. Four 
months after Q. 5 had struggled back to port, her men 
were out again in the Pargust, a merchant vessel on 
the same Special Service. The ship was going 8 knots 
in heavy rain and mist, with a fresh southerly breeze 
and a choppy sea. Like Q. 5, she got what she was 
looking for — what others run fast and far to avoid. 
A torpedo was seen coming towards her on the starboard 
beam. It was apparently fired at very close range, 
for it had not yet settled down to its depth, but jumped 



246 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

out of the water when only a hundred yards from 
the ship. This time there was no choice, and no 
manoeuvring ; Par gust received the shot in the engine- 
room and near the water-line. It made a large rent, 
filled the boiler-room, the engine-room and No. 5 hold 
with water, killed a stoker, wounded Engineer Sub- 
Lieutenant John Smith, R.N.R., and blew the starboard 
lifeboat into the air, landing pieces of it on the aerial. 

The alarm had already been sounded and 6 Abandon 
ship ' ordered. The three remaining boats — one life- 
boat and two dinghies — were lowered, full of men, the 
ship's helm being put hard a-starboard to get a lee for 
them. Lieutenant F. R. Hereford, R.N.R., as before, 
went in charge of them and greatly distinguished himself 
by the coolness and propriety with which he acted the 
part of Master of the supposed merchantman. 

As the last boat was pushing off, the enemy's peri- 
scope was seen for the first time, just before the port 
beam, and about 400 yards from the ship. He turned 
and came straight on ; but ten minutes later, when only 
50 yards from the ship and close to the stern of the 
lifeboat, he submerged completely and disappeared. 
His periscope was sighted again a few minutes later, 
directly astern ; he then steamed to the starboard 
quarter, turned round and went across to the port beam, 
turned again towards the ship and lifeboat, and finally, 
alter all this nosing about, broke surface within 50 
yards or less. But even now he was extremely cautious, 
showing only his conning -tower and ends ; and when 
the lifeboat pulled away round the ship's stern, he 
followed close behind, with only one man visible on 
top of the conning-tower, shouting directions to those 
below. 



Q-BOATS 247 

For the next three minutes of this long game of 
patience, the strain was intense. Commander Campbell 
was watching the man on the conning-tower carefully, 
for as long as he saw him perched up there he knew that 
he could reserve his fire. Lieutenant Hereford was 
waiting till he was certain that his captain was in a 
winning position. As soon as that was attained, he 
pulled deliberately towards the ship. This annoyed 
the submarine, whose object was evidently, in case of a 
fight, to keep the boats as much as possible in the line 
of fire. He came right up to the surface and began to 
semaphore to the boats, at the same time training a 
Maxim on them. 

But by this time the U-boat was only one point 
before the ship's beam, with all guns bearing on him 
at 50 yards' range — Commander Campbell's chance had 
come. He opened fire with a shot from the 4-inch gun, 
which struck the base of the conning-tower and also 
removed the two periscopes. Hit after hit followed, 
nearly all in the conning-tower, which could no longer 
be closed. The submarine took a list to port, and several 
men rushed up, out of the hatch abaft the conning-tower. 
Then, as the stern began to sink and oil squirted from 
the boat's sides, the rest of the crew came out, held 
up their hands and waved in token of surrender. 
Commander Campbell, of course, ordered ' Cease fire ' ; 
but no sooner had the order been obeyed, than the pirate 
started to move off on the surface, hoping, though 
listing to port and down by the stern, and in honour 
bound a prisoner, to get away in the mist. The 
Par gust could not follow, so that she was obliged to 
open fire again. The U-boat's breach of faith did not 
save her. In her quick rush, she got to about 300 yards 



248 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

from her captor, whose guns continued to speak straight 
to her. Then a shot apparently touched off one of 
her torpedoes — there was an explosion forward, and 
she fell over on her side. For a moment her bow 
was seen jutting up sharply out of the water, and the 
next she was gone. 

In her reckless rush to escape she had washed 
overboard her men abaft the conning-tower ; one man 
went down clinging to her bow, and some who came up 
the fore-hatch were left struggling in the thick oil. 
The boats of the Par gust were sent to the rescue. They 
had a hard pull to windward in a choppy sea ; but they 
managed to save the only two whom they found alive. 
The Par gust lay tossing helplessly for nearly four hours. 
Then H.M.S. Crocus arrived and towed her into port, 
escorted by another of H.M.'s ships and the U.S.S. 
Cushing. 

' It is difficult,' says Commander Campbell, 'where 
all did well, to mention individual officers and men, 
as any one officer or man could easily have spoiled 
the show. It was a great strain for those on board 
to have to remain entirely concealed for thirty-five 
minutes after the ship was torpedoed — especially, for 
instance, the foremost gun's crew, who had to remain 
flat on the deck without moving a muscle.' And the 
actual combatants were not the only heroes ; for he 
adds: 'The men in the boats, especially the lifeboat, 
ran a great risk of being fired on by me if the sub- 
marine closed them.' 

It is difficult for a grateful country, difficult even 
for the most generously sympathetic of sovereigns, 
to deal adequately with a ship's company like this. 
Every man on board had already been mentioned or 



Q-BOATS 249 

decorated, most of them more than once, and by the 
very names of their successive ships they were already 
marked out for lasting honour. Still, for our sake 
rather than for theirs, we may be glad to know that 
what tokens could be given them, were given. First, 
Commander Campbell became a Captain, and others 
were promoted in their various ranks. Then the 
memorable thirteenth clause of the Statutes of the 
Victoria Cross was put into operation. By this it is 
ordained that in the event of a gallant and daring act 
having been performed by a ship's company, or other 
body of men, in which the Admiral, General, or other 
officer commanding such forces may deem that all are 
equally brave and distinguished, then the officer com- 
manding may direct that one officer shall be selected, 
by the officers engaged, for the decoration ; and in 
like manner, one man shall be selected by the seamen 
or private soldiers, for the decoration. Knowing as 
we do what Captain Campbell felt about his officers 
and men, we can imagine something of his satisfaction 
at being able to recommend that the V.C. should be worn 
on behalf of the whole ship's company by Lieutenant 
R. N. Stuart, D.S.O., R.N.R., and by seaman William 
Williams, D.S.M., R.N.R. The latter, when one of the 
gun ports was damaged by the shock of the torpedo, 
saved it from falling down and exposing the whole 
secret of the ship, by bearing at great personal risk 
and with great presence of mind the whole weight of the 
port until assistance could be given him. The former 
was the Captain's first -lieutenant and second self. 
These two crosses, and his high rank, were the Captain's 
own reward ; but to mark the occasion, a bar was also 
added to his D.S.O. 



250 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

To these men there was now but one thing wanting 
— to show their greatness in adversity : and Fortune, 
that could deny nothing to Gordon Campbell, gave him 
this too. Less than two months after the Par gust 9 s 
action he was at sea in the Special Service ship Dunraven, 
disguised as an armed British merchant vessel, and 
zigzagging at eight knots in rough water. A submarine 
was sighted on the horizon two points before the star- 
board beam ; but the zigzag course was maintained, 
and the enemy steered towards the ship, submerging 
about twenty minutes after she was first seen. Twenty- 
six minutes later she broke surface on the starboard 
quarter at 5,000 yards, and opened fire. Captain, 
Campbell at once ran up the white ensign, returned 
the fire with his after -gun, a 2|-pounder, and ordered 
the remainder of the crew to take ' shell cover.' He 
also gave directions for much smoke to be made, but 
at the same time reduced speed to seven knots, with 
an occasional zigzag, to give the U-boat a chance of 
closing. If he had been the merchantman he seemed, 
he could in all probability have escaped. He was 
steaming head to sea, and the submarine's firing was 
very poor, the shots nearly all passing over. 

After about half an hour the enemy ceased firing 
and came on at full speed. A quarter of an hour 
later he turned broadside on, and reopened fire. The 
Dunraven 9 s gun kept firing short, intentionally, and 
signals were made en clair for the U-boat's benefit, 
such as ' Submarine chasing and shelling me ' — ' Sub- 
marine overtaking me. Help. Come quickly!' — and 
finally, 'Am abandoning ship.' The shells soon began 
to fall closer. Captain Campbell made a cloud of steam 
to indicate boiler trouble, and ordered 'Abandon ship,' 



Q-BOATS 251 

at the same time stopping, blowing off steam, and turn- 
ing his broadside so that all he did should be visible. 
To add to the appearance of panic, a boat was let go 
by the foremost fall on its side. The pirate (thoroughly 
confident now) closed, and continued his shelling. 
One shell went through Dunraven's poop, exploding 
a depth-charge and blowing Lieutenant Charles Bonner, 
D.S.C., R.N.R., out of his control station. After two 
more shells into the poop, the U-boat ceased fire again 
and closed. He was " coming along very nicely ' from 
port to starboard, so as to pass four or five hundred 
yards away. But in the meantime, the poop was on 
fire. Clouds of dense black smoke were issuing from 
it and partially hiding the submarine. It was obvious 
to Captain Campbell that since the magazine and depth- 
charges were in the poop, an explosion must soon take 
place. He was faced with the choice of opening fire 
through the smoke, with a poor chance of success, 
or waiting till the enemy should have got on to the 
weather side. He decided to wait, trusting his men 
as faithfully as they were trusting him. 

The U-boat came on, but all too slowly. She was 
only just passing across Dunraveri 's stern when the 
dreaded explosion took place in the poop. The 4-inch 
gun and gun's crew complete were blown into the air. 
The gun landed forward on the well deck, and the crew 
in various places — one man in the water. This was a 
misfortune that might well have broken their captain's 
heart — the submarine had only to steam another 200 
yards, and he would have had a clear sight and three 
guns bearing on her at 400 yards range. Moreover 
the explosion had started the ' Open fire ' buzzers at 
the guns; and the gun on the bridge, which was the 



252 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

only one then bearing, had duly opened fire. The 
U-boat had already started to submerge, alarmed by 
the explosion ; but it was thought that one hit was 
obtained on the conning -tower as he disappeared. 

Captain Campbell's heart was not broken, nor was 
his natural force abated. Realising that a torpedo would 
probably come next, he ordered the doctor, Surgeon- 
probationer Alexander Fowler, D.S.C., R.N.V.R., to 
remove all the wounded and lock them up in cabins 
or elsewhere, so as not to risk detection in ' the next 
part.' He then turned hoses on to the flaming poop, 
where, though the deck was red hot, the magazine was 
apparently still intact and dangerous. At the same 
time he remembered that a man-of-war had answered 
his signal for assistance when the explosion took place ; 
and being determined on trying for a second fight, he 
now signalled to this ship to keep away, as the action 
was not yet ended. She not only kept away, but kept 
the ring, by deflecting traffic while these invincibles 
fought the pirate to a finish. 

The torpedo came at last, from a point about 1,000 
yards on the starboard side, and it struck abaft the 
engine-room. Captain Campbell at once ordered a 
second ' Abandon ship ' or ' Q abandon ship,' as he 
called it ; for by it he was professing to completely 
abandon a ship whose disguise had been detected. He 
left his guns visible, and sent a second party of men 
away on a raft and a damaged boat. The poop con- 
tinued to burn fiercely, and 4 -inch shells exploded every 
few minutes. The submarine put up her periscope and 
circled round at various ranges, viewing the position 
cautiously. After forty minutes she broke surface 
directly astern, where no gun would bear upon her, 



Q-BOATS 253 

and shelled the Dunraven at a range of a few hundred 
yards. Nearly every shot was a hit, but some fell near 
the boats. Two burst on the bridge and did much 
damage. 

In another twenty minutes the enemy ceased firing 
and again submerged. Captain Campbell had now no 
resource left but his torpedoes, of which he carried two 
— one on each side. He fired the first as the U-boat 
steamed past the port side at 150 yards — too short a 
range for certainty of depth. The bubbles passed 
just ahead of the periscope, and the enemy failed to 
notice it. He turned very sharply round the ship's 
bow and came slowly down the starboard side at three 
knots. The second torpedo was then fired, but the 
bubbles passed a couple of feet abaft the periscope. 
This was cruelly hard luck, for the maximum depth 
was on ; but there is no doubt that this torpedo, like 
the other, must have leaped over, from being fired at 
so close a range. 

This time the enemy saw his danger, and instantly 
submerged. Captain Campbell had now lost his last 
chance of a kill, and was bound to signal urgently for 
assistance. He did so ; but in case the U-boat reappeared 
to torpedo or shell again, he arranged for some of his 
remaining men to be ready to jump overboard in a 
final panic, leaving still himself and one gun's crew 
to fight a forlorn hope. This last extremity was not 
reached. The U.S.S. Noma arrived almost immediately 
and fired at a periscope a few hundred yards astern 
until it disappeared. Then came two King's ships, 
the Attack and Christopher. Boats were recalled, 
the fire extinguished, and everything on board having 
now exploded, arrangements were made for towing. 



254 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

For twenty-four hours the Christopher bore her burden 
like a saint. Then the weather began to tell upon the 
half -dead ship, and sixty of her crew and her wounded 
were transferred to the trawler Foss. The next night 
the sea claimed the Dunraven in unmistakable tones. 
The Christopher came alongside and brought off her 
captain and the rest of her crew ; and when she rolled 
end up, gave her a gunshot and a depth-charge, to take 
her to her last berth. 

In reporting the action, Captain Campbell brought 
specially to notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant 
Bonner and the 4-inch gun's crew. ' Lieutenant Bonner 
having been blown out of his control by the first ex- 
plosion, crawled into the gun -hatch with the crew. 
They there remained at their posts with a fire raging 
in the poop below, and the deck getting red hot. One 
man tore up his shirt to give pieces to the gun's crew, 
to stop the fumes getting into their throats ; others 
lifted the boxes of cordite off the deck to keep it from 
exploding, and all the time they knew that they must 
be blown up, as the secondary supply and magazine 
were immediately below. They told me afterwards 
that communication with the main control was cut off, 
and although they knew they would be blown up, they 
also knew that they would spoil the show if they moved ; 
so they remained until actually blown up with their gun. 
Then when, as wounded men, they were ordered to re- 
main quiet in various places during the second action, 
they had to lie there unattended and bleeding, with ex- 
plosions continually going on aboard, and splinters from 
the enemy's shell-fire penetrating their quarters. Lieu- 
tenant Bonner, himself wounded, did what he could for 
two who were with him in the ward-room. When I 



Q-BOATS 255 

visited them after the action, they thought little of 
their wounds, but only expressed their disgust that the 
enemy had not been sunk. Surely such bravery is hard 
to equal. ' 

Hard to equal — harder far to speak about ! The 
King said all that can be said : ' Greater bravery than 
was shown by all officers and men on this occasion 
can hardly be conceived.' And again he testified the 
same by symbols — among them a second bar for Cap- 
tain Campbell, V.C., D.S.O., R.N. ; the Victoria Cross for 
Lieutenant C. G. Bonner, D.S.C., R.N.R. ; and another, 
under Article 13, for the 4-inch gun's crew, who named 
Ernest Pitcher, P.O., to wear it to the honour of them 
all. The whole ship's company is now starred like 
a constellation ; but the memory of their service will 
long outshine their stars. 



CHAPTER XV 

SUBMARINE V. SUBMARINE 

Since submarines must be hunted, there is something 
specially attractive in the idea of setting other sub- 
marines to hunt them ; it seems peculiarly just that 
while the pirate is lying in wait under water for his 
victim, he should himself be ambushed by an avenger 
hiding under the same waters and possessed of the same 
deadly weapons of offence. 

But this method, satisfactory as it is to the imagi- 
nation, is involved in several practical difficulties. If 
we put ourselves in the position of a submarine com- 
mander with orders to go out and kill U-boats, we shall 
quickly come up against some of the more obvious of 
these. The sea is a large place ; the submarine moves 
about it slowly, and therefore takes a longtime to patrol 
a given area. Also the very worst point of view from 
which to survey that area is the eye -piece of a periscope 
raised only some two feet above the surface. The 
strain upon the eye is very severe, when hour after 
hour is spent in looking for ships of ordinary size, 
with freeboard, funnels and streamers of smoke. How 
much more severe, when the object to be looked for 
is a conning -tower at most, with waves tumbling about 
it, or possibly only a periscope 4 inches in diameter ! 
Let us suppose, however, that all the preliminary 

256 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 257 

conditions are as good as they can be ; that the com- 
mander is in the best of health, with sound nerves and 
good instruments, and that he is lucky enough to sight 
a chance near the beginning of his cruise, while his 
eye is unwearied and his judgment alert. He will 
still be hampered by two considerations — he must make 
sure that the boat he is about to attack is an enemy 
and not a friend, and he must take the not very 
remote risk of being rammed, bombed, or depth-charged 
by a British destroyer or a German seaplane, while 
his attention is fixed entirely on the chase. 

Finally, there are the purely technical difficulties 
of the attack. Manoeuvring for position is not easy, 
even when the enemy is a large and visible ship of war ; 
it is ten times harder when he is a submerged or nearly 
submerged vessel, and not steaming straight ahead, 
but cruising about with sudden and erratic changes of 
course, as he searches for or sights his intended victims. 
And here the nature and habits of the torpedo have also 
to be considered. A periscope, or even a conning- 
tower, is not a very good object for a distant shot. 
On the other hand if the range is too short, say less than 
250 yards, the torpedo is very likely to miss. This is 
due to the fact that a torpedo requires a certain length 
of run before it can settle to its course evenly at the 
depth for which it is set. It begins by plunging, then 
rises, sometimes even breaks surface, and finally takes 
its proper depth, which may be set for anything from 
6 to 22 feet. A torpedo fired at a periscope must be 
set deep, for the submerged part of the boat will be 
15 feet or more below the surface. If it were fired at 
so short a distance as 100 or 120 yards it would reach 
the target while still on its upward bound, and might 



258 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

easily leap clean over the U-boat's rounded back. At 
a still less range, it would probably dive under the enemy 
altogether. Moreover, up to a distance of 200 yards — 
or even more — the explosion of a torpedo is dangerous 
to the attacker as well as to the attacked. Water, 
being much less elastic than air, conveys the shock of 
a blow far more completely ; and of course, in such a 
case, a submarine vessel, being entirely surrounded by 
water, would suffer much more from the concussion 
than a ship with only part of its hull below the surface. 

If we take account of these obvious difficulties, and 
remember that there are others of which we know 
nothing, we shall realise that the destruction of a 
U-boat by one of our own submarines can only be 
accomplished by a combination of skill, courage, and 
good fortune. The examples which follow will make 
this clear. 

Let us take first the case of E. 54, Lieutenant -Com- 
mander Robert H. T. Raikes, which shows a record 
of two successes within less than four months— one 
obtained with comparative ease, the other with great 
difficulty. The first of the two needs no detailed account 
or comment. E. 54, on passage to her patrol ground, 
had che good fortune to sight three U-boats in succession 
before she had gone far from her base. At two of 
these she fired without getting a hit ; but the third 
she blew all to pieces, and picked up out of the oil and 
debris no less than seven prisoners. Her next adventure 
was a much more arduous one. She started in mid- 
August on a seven-day cruise, and in the first four 
days saw nothing more exciting than a neutral cruiser 
carrying out target practice. On the morning of the 
fifth day, a U-boat was sighted at last ; and after twenty 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 259 

five minutes' manoeuvring, two torpedoes were fired at 
her, at a distance of 600 yards, with deflection for 11 
knots. Her actual speed turned out to be more nearly 
6 or 7 knots, and both shots must have missed ahead 
of her. She dived immediately, and a third torpedo 
failed to catch her as she went down. 

An hour and twenty minutes afterwards she re- 
appeared on the surface, and Lieut. -Commander Raikes 
tried to cut her off, by steering close in to the bank 
by which she was evidently intending to pass. E. 54 
grounded on the bank, and her commander got her 
off with feelings that can be easily imagined. Less than 
an hour after, a U-boat — the same or another — was 
sighted coming down the same deep. Again Lieut. - 
Commander Raikes tried to cut her off, and again he 
grounded in the attempt. He was forced to come to the 
surface when the enemy was still 2,000 yards away. 
To complete his ill-fortune, another U-boat was sighted 
within an hour and a quarter, but got away without 
a shot being possible. 

Twenty-four hours later the luck turned, and all 
these disappointments were forgotten. At 2.6 p.m., 
Lieut. -Commander Raikes sighted yet another U-boat 
in open water, on the old practice ground of the neutral 
cruiser of three days before. He put E. 54 to her full 
speed, and succeeded in overtaking the enemy. By 
2.35 he had placed her in a winning position on the 
U-boat's bow, and at right angles to her course. At 
400 yards' range he fired two torpedoes, and had the 
satisfaction to see one of them detonate in a fine cloud 
of smoke and spray. When the smoke cleared away, 
the U-boat had entirely disappeared ; there were no 
survivors. Next day, after dark, E. 54 's time being 



260 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

up, she returned to her base, having had a full taste 
of despair and triumph. 

Earlier in the year, Lieutenant Bradshaw, in G. 13, 
had had a somewhat similar experience. He went 
out to a distant patrol in cold March weather and had 
not been on the ground five hours when his adventures 
began. At 11.50 a.m. he was blinded by a snow squall/; 
and when he emerged from it, he immediately sighted 
a large hostile submarine within shot. Unfortunately 
the U-boat sighted G. 13 at the same moment, and the 
two dived simultaneously. This, as may easily be 
imagined, is one of the most trying of all positions in 
the submarine game, and so difficult as to be almost 
insoluble, The first of the two adversaries to move 
will very probably be the one to fall in the duel ; yet 
a move must be made sooner or later, and the boldest 
will be the first to move. Lieutenant Bradshaw seems 
to have done the right thing both ways. For an hour 
and a half he lay quiet, listening for any sign of the 
U-boat's intentions ; then, at 1.30 p.m., he came to the 
surface, prepared for a lightning shot or an instantaneous 
manoeuvre. No more complete disappointment could 
be imagined. He could see no trace of the enemy — he 
had not even the excitement of being shot at. On the 
following day he was up early, and spent nearly eleven 
fruitless hours knocking about in a sea which grew 
heavier and heavier from the S.S.E. Then came another 
hour which made ample amends. At 3.55 p.m. a large 
U-boat came in sight, steering due west. Lieutenant 
Bradshaw carried out a rapid dive and brought his 
tubes to the ready ; courses and speeds as requisite 
for attack. (These reports often omit superfluous 
details, while they bristle with intention.) The 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 261 

manoeuvring which followed took over half an hour, 
and must have seemed interminably long to everyone 
in G. 13. At 4.30 the enemy made the tension still 
greater by altering course some 35°. It was not until 
4.49 that Lieutenant Bradshaw found himself exactly 
where all commanders would wish to be, 8 points on 
the enemy's bow. He estimated the U-boat's speed 
at eight knots, allowed 18° deflection accordingly, and 
fired twice. It was a long shot in rough water, and 
he had nearly a minute to wait for the result. Then 
came the longed-for sound of a heavy explosion. A 
column of water leaped up, directly under the U-bont's 
conning-tower, and she disappeared instantly. Ten 
minutes afterwards, G. 13 was on the surface, and 
making her way through a vast lake of oil, which lay 
thickly upon the sea over an area of a mile. In such an 
oil lake a swimmer has no margin of buoyancy, and it 
was not surprising that there were no survivors to pick 
up. The only relics of the U-boat were some pieces 
of board from her interior fittings. G. 13 completed 
her patrol of twenty-eight days, and returned to her 
base without sighting another enemy — she had cleared 
that area for a month. 

A successful hunt by Lieutenant North, in command 
of H. 4, resembles G. 13's exploit in many respects, 
but has this picturesque difference, that it took place 
in southern waters and in a bright May midnight. It 
was more than forty-eight hours since H. 4 had cast 
off from the pens before she sighted the quarry she was 
looking for, 3 points on her port bow. The hour was 
11.10 p.m. and the moon was nearly full. Lieutenant 
North at once turned towards the enemy and went to 
night action stations. The distance between the two 



262 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

boats was about 1,000 yards, and it was desirable to 
reduce this to a minimum — say to 250 yards — in order 
to make sure of a hit in the circumstances. The enemy 
was a large U-boat and was going about 8 knots, in a 
course which would bring her across H. 4 almost too 
directly. But she had not advanced more than 3Q0 
yards when she altered course 8 points to starboard. 
Lieutenant North instantly saw his opportunity, 
turned first to port to cut her off ; and then, when his 
superior speed had made this a certainty, 8 points to 
starboard to close her. Within four minutes after 
sighting her, he had placed himself on her port beam 
at the desired range of 250 yards. He fired two 
torpedoes. Both hit and detonated, one under the 
conning -tower, and one in the engine-room. The enemy 
sank immediately — in fifteen seconds she had gone 
completely. Then came the usual search for survivors, 
and two were eventually rescued ; they were the captain 
of the boat and his quartermaster. H. 4 combed out 
the surrounding area thoroughly ; but no more could 
be found; and in view of the presence of prisoners, 
Lieutenant North at once returned to his base. 

It is not to our purpose to enumerate successful 
shots of the simple and easy kind ; one or two examples 
will stand for a number of these. C. 15, for instance, 
sighted an enemy submarine at 2.43 on a November 
afternoon, dived and flooded tubes ; sighted the U-boat 
again in the periscope at 3.12 ; at 3.15 fired at 400 yards. 
The noise of the explosion was slight, but the enemy 
— U.C. 65 — sank immediately, and C. 15 picked up five 
survivors. B. 7, Commander C. G. Brodie, sank U. 45 
only twenty- two minutes after sighting her, at a range of 
1,200 yards. Lieutenant A. W. Forbes, in C. 7, sighted 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 263 

a large U-boat on his port quarter, at 3.32 a.m. of a 
dark and misty April night. He immediately attacked 
on the surface, and sank her with a single shot at 400 
yards. These prompt and successful shots deserve 
full credit ; but every now and then some exceptional 
circumstance will add a special reason for satisfaction. 
For example, it is always good to catch a pirate 
red-handed. Lieut. -Commander G. R. S. Watkins, in 
E. 45, was beginning his day's patrol at 6.15, on a dim 
October morning, when he observed flashes on his star- 
board bow. He altered course in that direction, and 
after five minutes sighted an unhappy merchantman 
under fire from a U-boat. He dived at once and ap- 
proached. At 6.37, he was near enough to see through 
his periscope that the vessel was a steamer with Dutch 
colours painted on her side. She was a neutral, and of 
course unarmed, but such considerations meant nothing 
to the U-boat pirate, who had ceased fire and was coolly 
waiting for his victim to sink. He was a large sub- 
marine, partially submerged, and by way of further 
caution he was steering about in figures of 8, with his 
gun still manned. But, for all his caution, just retribu- 
tion was upon him. Lieut. -Commander Watkins fired 
his first shot at 400 yards, and missed — altered course 
instantly, and in little more than three minutes fired 
again, from a new angle, two shots in rapid succession. 
Thirty seconds afterwards, justice was done in full ; a 
loud explosion was heard and ihere was a tremendous 
convulsion in the water. For the moment, E. 45 was 
blinded — her periscope was submerged. With a re- 
bound she came to the surface, saw in one quick glance 
that her enemy was destroyed, and sank again to 60 
feet. When she had reloaded, and returned finally 



264 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

to the surface, both pirate and Dutchman had dis- 
appeared into the depths. 

Lieut. -Commander Vincent M. Cooper, in E. 43, also 
had the satisfaction of surprising an enemy at wprk. 
This was a U.C. boat, engaged not in actually firing 
on merchantmen, but in the still more deadly and 
murderous business of laying mines for them. When 
sighted by E. 43, she had evidently just come to the 
surface, as men were observed on the bridge engaged 
in spreading the bridge screen. Lieut. "Commander 
Cooper went straight for her at full speed. But as it 
was 9.30 a.m., and broad daylight, he was forced to 
remain submerged, and being in shallow water he soon 
had to slow down. Again and again he bumped heavily 
on shoals, but fortunately was never quite forced to 
the surface. After an hour of this he got into deeper 
water, and was able to go faster. At 11.0 he rose to 
24 feet, and took a sight through the periscope. There 
was the enemy, about 400 yards away on his port beam. 
He dived, and five minutes later came up for another 
sight. This time the U-boat was on his port quarter. 
He turned towards her, but at the moment of attack, 
when the sights were just coming on, E. 43 dipped under 
a big wave and the chance was spoiled. 

Her commander was not to be thrown off ; he 
immediately increased to full speed, altered course, 
and planned a fresh attack. By 11.17 — nearly two 
hours after beginning the chase-— he w T as in position, 
2 points abaft the enemy's beam at 550 yards' distance. 
This time he took every precaution to ensure a kill. 
On firing he dipped his periscope, so that in case the 
boat rose suddenly nothing should be visible ; and at 
the same time he yawed to starboard, so as to be ready 




Was steering about in figures of 8, with his gun still manned. 



f 



266 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

with another tube if the first shot was a miss. Then 
came a trying period of suspense and disappointment ; 
he listened in vain for the sound of an explosion, and 
after forty-five seconds raised his periscope to see what 
had happened. It was only later, on communicating 
with his officers and men in the forward and after 
compartments, that he found, as others have found, 
how differently sound may affect the different parts 
of a submarine when submerged. The central com- 
partment may be completely deafened, either by reason 
of its position, when a detonation occurs directly ahead 
or astern, or by the much slighter continuous noises 
of the various electrical machines which are situated 
there. In this case, the dull report of the under -water 
explosion, which was not audible to Lieut. -Commander 
Cooper, was heard in both the other compartments 
about twenty seconds after he had fired the torpedo. 

At the moment when the periscope was raised, the 
U-boat had disappeared, and there was a great com- 
motion in the water where she had been. E. 43 hurried 
to the spot and found the surface covered with a black 
oily substance which stuck to the glass of the periscope 
and put it out of action. Lieut. -Commander Cooper 
rose to 20 feet and put up his second periscope, but 
the U-boat was gone and had left no survivors. 

E. 35 has a chase to her credit, in some respects 
very similar to this one ; but the story is worth adding, 
because of the masterly precision with which the Com- 
mander, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes, conducted the 
manoeuvre and reported it afterwards. At 4 o'clock, 
on a May afternoon, he sighted in the periscope a low- 
lying object two to three miles distant on the port 
beam. His own boat was at 26 feet, and the object was 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 267 

only visible intermittently, when on top of a wave — 
it was impossible to be certain about it. He turned at 
once and went straight for it, speeding up as he did so. 
But this led to immediate difficulties. There was a 
long breaking swell across his course and a strong wind. 
Depth keeping was almost impossible, and there was a 
constant risk of E, 35 breaking surface and throwing 
away her chance. It was necessary to go down to 
quieter levels, and for some time she travelled at 40 
feet with full speed on. 

At .4.18, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes reduced speed 
and brought her up again to 26 feet. His first observa- 
tion, on looking into the periscope, was that the bearing 
had changed ; and secondly, that the floating object 
was without doubt a large enemy submarine. He 
headed at once to cut her off — she was making slowly 
off northwards — and dived to 40 feet in order to increase 
to full speed himself. 

After a tw r enty-four minutes' run he slowed down 
again for periscope observation, ordering the boat to be 
brought to 23 feet. This was a very anxious moment, 
for the sea once more all but gave him away. The 
swell rolled E. 35 up till she was actually for an instant 
breaking surface, within 1,800 yards of the enemy. She 
was got down again to 26 feet without having been seen, 
and her commander then very skilfully placed her in 
the trough of the sea, where he could pursue the chase 
on a slightly converging course instead of following 
right astern. On this course, which soon became abso- 
lutely parallel to that of the enemy, he remained at 
periscope depth for another half hour ; then at 5.20, 
observing that he was not gaining fast enough, he 
dived again to 40 feet and speeded up, at the same 



268 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

time bringing a torpedo-tube to the c ready.' At 5.35 
he slowed once more for observation, and found the 
range had decreased to 1,100 yards. Down he went 
again for another spurt. At 5.53, he was within 900 
yards ; but as the parallel courses of the two boats 
were only a little more than 100 yards apart, he was 
6 still very fine on enemy's port quarter '—the shot was 
almost a bow-chaser shot and practically hopeless. 
He dived again, and for twenty-four more minutes 
patiently continued to observe and spurt alternately. 

At 6.17, a dramatic change occurred in the situation. 
On rising to observe, he found that the enemy, for some 
irrelevant reason of her own, had turned 16 points to 
starboard, and was now actually coming back on a 
course which would bring her down the starboard side 
of E. 35 at a distance of scarcely more than 200 yards. 
This was much too close for a desirable shot — setting 
aside the dangers of the explosion, it was not certain 
that the torpedo would have picked up its depth 
correctly in so short a run, and a miss might put the 
U-boat on guard. Still, to manoeuvre for a fresh 
position would take time and the chance was quite a 
possible one ; the torpedo, at the end of 200 yards, 
would be at any rate near picking up its depth, and 
might well make a detonating hit on its upward track 
—it could not miss for deflection at that range ; the 
enemy's length was taking up almost the whole width 
of the periscope. Even if it were a miss underneath, 
it would probably escape notice, especially in so heavy 
a sea. 

Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes took exactly one minute 
to perceive the change of course and the wholly altered 
situation, to weigh all the above considerations, and 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 269 

to make his decision. At 6.18 he fired, lowered his 
periscope, put his helm hard a -starboard, and increased 
his speed. The hydrophone operator heard the torpedo 
running on her track, but the sound grew fainter and 
fainter and died away without a detonation. The shot 
was a miss beneath the target ; after more than two 
long hours, the chase had failed. 

The failure was brilliantly redeemed, and with 
astonishing swiftness. To realise the swiftness and 
the brilliancy of the manoeuvre which followed, it is 
necessary to bring it vividly before the mind's eye. 
The two boats must be seen at the moment of the first 
shot, passing one another at 200 yards on opposite 
courses, E. 35 going N.E., and the U-boat S.W. on her 
starboard beam. At 6.19 the enemy turned a little 
more towards E. 35, and began to steer due west under 
her stern, happily still without sighting her periscope. 
E. 35 was on her old course, running farther and farther 
away to the N.E., and there was already some 500 yards 
between them. But when the U-boat took up her 
westerly course, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes in an 
instant sent his boat on a swift curve to port, turning 
in quick succession N., N.W., W., and S.W., till in less 
than seven minutes after missing his first shot he was 
bearing down S.S.W. on the enemy, and therefore only 
30 degrees abaft her starboard beam and hardly more 
than 500 yards distant. By pure luck, the unconscious 
U-boat had at the first critical moment done precisely 
the right thing to save herself ; by sheer skill, the 
E-boat had been brought back to a winning position. 
At 6.25 Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes — coolly estimating 
speed, distance, and deflection — fired one torpedo at his 
huge enemy's fore-turret and another at her after-fcurrefc. 



270 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Both hit where they were aimed to hit. The first 
made very little noise, but threw up a large column of 
water and debris. The second did not appear to the 
eye to produce quite so good a burst ; but the noise was 
louder, and the concussion felt in E. 35 was very power- 
ful indeed, the whole boat shaking and a few lights 
going out momentarily. When the smoke and water 
column had cleared away, there was nothing to be seen 
but a quickly expanding calm area, like a wide lake of 
oil with wreckage floating in it, and three or four 
survivors clinging to some woodwork. E. 35, with her 
sub -lieutenant, her coxswain, and one able seaman on 
deck, and life-lines ready, went at once to their rescue ; 
but a second U-boat made her appearance at that 
moment, and Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes was obliged 
to dive at once. Three minutes afterwards, a torpedo 
passed him on the starboard side ; but the new enemy 
was over two miles away, and though he reloaded his 
tubes and patrolled submerged on various courses, he 
never succeeded in picking her up in the periscope. 
She, also, had no doubt dived, and the two boats had 
scarcely more chance of coming to action than two 
men miles apart upon the Downs at midnight. 

In such a case, only a lucky chance could bring the 
duellists together ; and even then successful shooting 
would be difficult. But a bold submarine commander, 
having once closed, would improvise a new form of 
attack rather than let a pirate go his way. E. 50 was 
commanded by an officer of this temper when she 
sighted an enemy submarine, during a patrol off the 
east coast. Both boats were submerged at the time ; 
but they recognised each other's nationality by the 
different appearance of their periscopes. The German 



SUBMARINE v. SUBMARINE 271 

had two — thin ones of a light-grey colour, and with an 
arched window at the top, peculiar to their Service, 
The British commander drove straight at the enemy 
at full speed, and reached her before she had time to 
get down to a depth of complete invisibility. E. 50 
struck lair between the periscopes ; her stem cut through 
the plates of the U-boat's shell and remained embedded 
in her back. Then came a terrific fight, like the death 
grapple of two primeval monsters. The German's 
only chance, in his wounded condition, was to come to 
the surface before he was drowned by leakage ; he blew 
his ballast tanks and struggled almost to the surface, 
bringing E. 50 up with him. The English boat countered 
by flooding her main ballast -tanks, and weighing her 
enemy down into the deep. This put the U-boat to the 
desperate necessity of freeing herself, leak or no leak. 
For a minute and a half she drew slowly aft, bumping 
E. 50 's sides as she did so ; then her effort seemed to 
cease, and her periscopes and conning-towers showed 
on E. 50 's quarter. She was evidently filling fast ; 
she had a list to starboard and was heavily down by 
the bows. As she sank, E. 50 took breath and looked 
to her own condition. She was apparently uninjured, 
but she had negative buoyancy and her forward hydro- 
planes were jammed, so that it was a matter of great 
difficulty to get her to rise. After four strenuous 
minutes she was brought to the surface, and traversed 
the position, searching for any further sign of the U- 
boat or her crew. But nothing was seen beyond the 
inevitable lake of oil, pouring up like the thick rank 
life-blood of the dead sea-monster. 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE HUNTED 



The hunter knows little, and cares little, about the feel- 
ings of the hunted ; and if he is hunting for food, or to 
exterminate vermin, his indifference is not unreasonable. 
The submarine may be classed with savage beasts, and 
is even less deserving of pity ; but it is not actually 
an animal, and the difference is important. It is 
controlled by beings with, human intelligence, speech, 
nerves and faculties ; and since they are our enemies, 
seeking our destruction while we seek theirs, it must 
be of interest to us, and may be of advantage, to know 
what are their feelings during the chase. 

Information of this kind is not easy to obtain ; but 
the enemy have thought fit to publish, for their own 
people, a certain number of accounts by submarine 
officers, and they have not been able to prevent all 
of them from finding their way to this country. Here, 
for instance, is an extract from the ' War Diary of 
U. 202,' by Lieut. -Commander Freiherr Spiegel von 
und zu Peckelsheim. 

6 At 4 o'clock I again came up to have a look through 
the periscope. . . , On our starboard bow was a large 
French torpedo boat with 4 funnels, on the watch. 
There was no land in sight. 

4 1 should much have liked to sink the smart -looking 

272 



THE HUNTED 273 

Frenchman. But the considerable probability, that 
in such a position I should then have the whole pack 
hunting me, induced me to refrain. I must admit that 
I found it very hard not to utilise this opportunity for 
a shot, and very reluctantly I lowered the periscope and 
gave orders to dive. This was our salvation. If we 
had continued a few minutes longer at the level at which 
here one uses the periscope, I should not be sitting 
to-day smoking cigarettes and writing my experiences. 

4 We were still diving, and the depth-gauge showed 
17 metres (56 feet). Suddenly we all had the sensation 
of having been struck on the head with a hammer. 
For a second we lost consciousness ; then we picked 
ourselves up from the deck, or from the corners into 
which we had been thrown, feeling pains in our heads, 
shoulders, and other parts of our bodies. The whole 
boat throbbed and trembled. Were we still alive ? 
What had happened ? Why was it so dark, black as 
night ? Ah ! the light was out ! 

6 "Examine the fuse!" 

4 "Fuse gone ! " 

4 "Put in spare fuse ! " 

4 Suddenly we had light again. This was all a 
matter of seconds, happening in far less time than it 
takes to describe it. 

1 What had happened ? Was it really not the end 
of us ? Was not the water rushing into the boat some- 
where, and carrying us down to the bottom ? It must 
have been a mine — a tremendous mine detonation close 
to the boat. Reports were made automatically from 
all compartments. 44 Bow compartment not making 
water ; stern compartment all right ; engine-room no 
water.' ' No water anywhere I 



274 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

' Then the boat inclined itself at a peculiar angle — 
the bow went down and the stern rose up. The boat 
was unaccountably trimmed by the bow, although the 
hydroplanes were hard over in the opposite direction. 

' "There is something wrong, sir," reported the man 
at the diving-wheel. " The boat won't answer to her 
helm. We must be hung up somewhere, by a rope, or 
perhaps a net ! " 

' The devil ! We are in a net, of course, and above 
us there are mines secured to the net. It is enough 
to drive one out of one's mind. 

' "Pay attention ! " I shouted from the conning - 
tower. " We have got to get through ! Hydroplanes 
hard up and hard down, utmost speed ahead with both 
engines ! Don't let her rise ! WTiatever happens, 
keep down ! There are mines above us ! " 

'The engines started, revolving at their highest 
revolutions. The boat shot forward, caught in the net, 
strained against it, bored itself a way downwards, tugged, 
tore, and finally left the wire net all ripped apart. 

* " Hurrah ! We are free ! The boat answers to her 
helm ! " cried the helmsman from below. 

' " Go deeper, dive to 50 metres (164 feet)," I ordered. 
"This is an evil spot hereabouts — it is hell itself." 

* I sat down on the life-saving apparatus and buried 
my head in my hands. Everything was going round 
with me like a mill-wheel. Above my eyes I had a 
pain as though needles were sticking into my forehead, 
and I had such a humming in my ears that I stopped 
them up with my fingers. 

'"This is certainly an evil spot," I repeated to my- 
self, " but what luck we had, most extraordinary luck, 
which has saved us I " 



THE HUNTED 275 

'Some time elapsed before the pains in my head 
allowed me to fit things together and understand what 
had happened. Yes, it was pure luck that we had dived 
just in time. We were at a depth of 17 metres when the 
explosion occurred, our bows touching the net. Things 
grew clearer and clearer to me as I thought them 
over. 

'When we hit against the net we stretched it taut 
and thus actuated the mine detonators, the mines being 
attached to the net at the depth at which a submarine 
usually proceeds. If we had attempted to attack the 
torpedo-boat, or for any other reasons had remained a 
little longer at the depth at which the periscope can be 
used, we should have run into the net in just the way that 
the enemy would have wished — viz., so that the mines 
would have exploded alongside or underneath us. 
What actually happened was that the mine exploded 
above us, and the main force was expended in the line of 
least resistance (viz., upwards), and we suffered nothing 
more than a fearful fright, and perhaps a few disfigure- 
ments to the thin plating of the superstructure.' 

U. 202 was certainly lucky this time. And though 
she was saved by sheer luck and nothing else, it is not 
unnatural, considering the ever-growing roll of those 
which fail to escape, that Lieut.-Commander Freiherr 
Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim should enlarge upon 
his terror at the moment and his self-congratulation 
afterwards. But he is mistaken if he thinks that he 
has come through the worst that can happen to a 
submarine commander. His struggle in the net was 
short and easy, when compared with the feats of a 
Bruce or a Cochrane in passing and repassing the barrage 



276 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

off Kilid Bahr ; and the jar he got from his mine seems 
to have affected his head more than his boat. In older 
navies, and among less excitable nations, these things 
are reported more quietly — more from a professional 
than a sensational point of view. 6 1 think;' writes 
Commander Courtney Boyle of a very similar accident, 
' I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my 
tail as I was turning, and exploded it . . . the whole 
boat was very badly shaken.' Not a word more about 
it, though his cruise continued for more than ten days 
afterwards. Without disparaging the German officer 
(who no doubt shares the national temperament, and 
knows how to move his audience), we may take pleasure 
in noting that the steadiness of nerve and the scientific 
view are in our favour. Given anything like a fair 
fight, and a reasonable time for play, it will not be 
the Peckelsheims who will win against our men. 

An experience of another kind is described in a 
number of the Illustrierte Zeitung of July 12, 1917. 
The date of the engagement was February 22, in the 
same year. 

' Just at dinner time the watch reports a tank 
steamer in an E.N.E. direction, steering a course 
approximately towards the boat. Masts, bridge and 
funnel are visible above the horizon. Tank steamers 
are very hard to sink, as they have stray bulkheads 
fitted to keep their volatile cargo in check. The torpedo 
must hit the aftermost engine to stop the tank steamer. 
The periscope must only be shown occasionally for a 
very short time, so as not to alarm her. The torpedo 
is fired at 700 metres (765 yards) away, the submarine 
comes to the surface and fires a shot from her forward 



THE HUNTED 277 

gun, as a signal to stop. The steamer understands, 
lowers tw© boats, and the crew abandon ship. Steam 
is blown off in a high white column. The master 
appears to be a sensible man, who does not intend to 
expose himself to shell fire for no purpose. The sub- 
marine approaches submerged and takes stock of the 
vessel — a black tank steamer, grey superstructure, 
no guns — the naval patent log hanging over the stern. 
The submarine then makes for the boats. As soon as 
they see her periscope, they hastily pull away. At 
length the submarine finds a favourable position to 
come to the surface, outside the boats, so that the latter 
are in the line of fire. She rises to the surface, with 
compressed air in her midship diving-tanks, the conning- 
tower hatch is opened and the process of blowing out 
the tanks begins. The boats have pulled away a little 
further, and just as they are being hailed there is a 
flash from the steamer. 

* A submarine trap ! Alarm. Flood tanks, dive 
rapidly ! The seconds seem interminable. The super- 
structure abaft the conning-tower is penetrated, and 
hardly has the hatch been closed when there is a sharp 
report in the conning-tower, a yellow flash, and explosive 
gases fill the air. A shell has penetrated the side of the 
conning-tower and exploded inside. All the fittings 
are shattered by splinters ; there is a sound of breaking 
glass. Another shell will fall directly and that will be 
the end of the war for us. Water is splashing in through 
the shot hole ; the boat is sinking into the shelter of 
the deep. The conning-tower is cleared, the inner 
hatch and voice -pipe cock are closed, and the leads laid 
into the control room. 

* it Anyone injured in the conning-tower ? " Only one, 



278 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

very slightly ; but their faces are black and their clothes 
look as though they had seen service. 

'At 20 metres (65 feet) there are two sharp explo- 
sions, and the boat trembles. The " poor shipwrecked 
men " have thrown depth-charges after us. A few of 
the lights go out, and further damage to the main 
switchboard is averted by timely action. The conning- 
tower is filling. In theory the boat can still remain 
afloat, but no one has yet survived to tell us how. The 
increasing weight causes the boat to sink to 40 metres 
(131 feet) in spite of her being down by the stern and 
with the engines at utmost speed. Water spurts through 
the leaky places, and, owing to short circuits, half the 
lights and important machinery break down suc- 
cessively — gyro compass, main rudder, forward hydro- 
plane (which, to make matters worse, jams at ; hard 
down '), trimming pumps, and all control apparatus. 
The tricolour captured from the full-rigged ship La 
Bayonne is pressed into service to plug the leak. The 
boat must be lightened by compressed air in the after 
and amidship diving tanks, and brought on to an even 
keel. She rises, certainly, but is more down by the 
stern than ever. The after compressed air service 
breaks down. We must avoid coming to the surface, 
whatever happens, for up above the enemy is lying 
in wait to fire at us. At 20 metres (65 feet) the diving- 
tank valves are opened, and all available men sent 
forward, in order that their weight may cause the bow 
to sink. The boat sinks by the bow, and the manoeuvre 
is repeated. In another twenty minutes it becomes 
impossible to proceed submerged. There is now only 
one, not very promising, alternative — to come to the 
surface suddenly and run away, firing as we go. 



THE HUNTED 279 

{ " Compressed air in all the tanks, open galley ven- 
tilator, man the guns, Diesel engines ready, and put to 
utmost speed as soon as possible." 

' The boat comes to the surface, the galley hatch is 
opened. A torrent of water rushes down ; never mind, 
we shall have to swim for it directly, anyhow. Now 
the way is clear to the surface. The steamer is about 
25 hms. (2734 yards) away, and firing as fast as she can. 
" You haven't got us yet — not by a long way I " The 
guns quickly reply. Any result ? The telescopic sights 
are still in the flooded conning-tower. The M.A.N. 
motors are quickly started — much more quickly than 
is permissible, but when all is staked on one card there 
is no help for it. All the men who are not occupied 
below are bringing up supply ammunition. The sub- 
lieutenant suddenly feels his feet blown away from 
under him, and staggers through a cloud of smoke 
against the gun. Poor fellow, he has probably had 
both legs shot away. But no, only a few small splinters 
— nothing more ! The shell passed between the legs 
of the foremost gunlayer, the drum of his ear was 
perforated by the report, and there are some lumps 
and holes in the ready ammunition. The shells pass 
through, close to the men ; they look like black specks 
in the air just before they fall. One of the railing 
supports is shattered. A Leipzig man is standing in 
the stern at the hand-wheel, steering calmly by the 
verbal directions of the navigating warrant -officer — 
the compasses can no longer be used. 

'The telescopic sights can now be recovered from 
the conning-tower. There is a report, •■ Destroyer to 
starboard." Quite right. She is proceeding on a 
parallel course at 80 hms. (8750 yards) and the fire of 



280 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

her four guns mingles with that of the tank steamer. A 
destroyer like that has a speed of over 30 knots, and 
carries 4-inch guns. 

< " On lifebelts ! " Below the horizon, in a S.S.E. 
direction, there must be a sailing-vessel ; we sighted one 
this morning. Perhaps the boat may be able to reach 
her, so as to save the crew from a Bar along fate. 

* The guns' crews have become so deaf from the noise 
of their own guns that it is only possible to direct one 
gun by verbal orders. The decoy ship is now so far 
away that there is no further need to fire at her. Open 
fire on the new foe then ! This is not a destroyer, how- 
ever, but a " submarine -destroyer " of the Foxglove 
class, about twice the size of the submarine, but no 
faster. At the same moment the second -engineer 
reports that he can repair the damaged conning-tower, 
and our hopes soar as far as neutral Spain. 

* " Open fire at 70 hms. (7655 yards) ! " Soon the 
columns of water from the shells, as high as the funnels, 
mark the fall of the shots, and the enemy begins to 
zigzag to avoid the troublesome shells, thereby inter- 
fering with the aim of her own guns. Suddenly the 
superstructure is enveloped in black smoke. A hit ! 
Another ! Several shells do not throw T up a column of 
water ; they must have buried themselves in her hull. 
Now she turns away, escapes from the zone of fire, 
and then follows in our wake. 

' The damage caused by the short circuit is repaired, 
ammunition put ready beside the guns, and, like Welling- 
ton at Waterloo, we await the coming of night. Our 
pursuer must have reported the engagement by wireless, 
with position and course. Soon destroyers will appear 
and compel the submarine to submerge. The leaking 



THE HUNTED 281 

oil supply will leave a track of oil on the surface, and 
indicate where depth-charges should be dropped. 

' The wireless aerial, which has been shot away, is 
repaired in order to keep an eye on the enemy's signals. 
Nothing to be heard. A lucky shot must have destroyed 
our pursuer's wireless, and she cannot report. All the 
men who are not occupied below are on deck smoking-, 
discussing their impressions, experiences, and premo- 
nitions ; dreams, uncomfortable forebodings, fortune - 
telling from cards, and all the means — such as green 
frogs— by which old fortune-tellers and ancient augurs 
used to foretell the future. 

* The sun is sinking below the horizon ; the chase 
has already lasted more than three hours. The decoy 
ship has long passed out of sight, and no new enemies 
have appeared. Suddenly shells begin falling close 
by. The Foxglove means to have another try as 
long as the light holds, and we feel that this is an 
impertinence. "Man the guns ! " 

* Again the after gun carries off the honours of the 
engagement. The rounds follow close on one another : 
sometimes three shells are in the air at once. They 
will soon reach their target ; the enemy again tries 
to zigzag. Range and deflection are quickly adjusted, 
and the shells leave her no peace. Once again that 
beautiful cloud of black smoke envelopes her super- 
structure and several others fail to raise the expected 
column of water. The enemy has ceased firing ; she 
turns sharply away at 92 hms. (10,000 yards), and follows 
us only at a respectful distance. An hour later she 
disappears in the darkness.' 

The deliberately false German communiquis, and 



282 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

even the more craftily composed stories in their press, 
are, as a rule, distinguished only for their clumsiness 
and bad psychology. But this is a vivid and quite 
possible account, and, if the details are accurate, the 
commander of the submarine had a most trying ex- 
perience and brought his boat home by great luck. 
It is hard to imagine a moment more desperate than 
that in which, after struggling to the surface and escaping 
from the Q-boat's guns, he heard the report of 4 Destroyer 
to starboard,' and knew that he could neither dive nor 
run from such an enemy. A good deal might have 
been made of this by a more inventive writer; 
the simple comment ' Quite right ! ' is much more con- 
vincing than any highly coloured phrase, and is almost 
enough by itself to prove the narrative genuine. Another 
intense moment lightly touched is that in which the 
deadly c destroyer ' turns out to be only the little 
10-knot patrol boat Alyssum, with her small guns, and a 
flight for bare life becomes suddenly a successful repulse 
of the enemy. It is noticeable, too, that the commander 
is not once mentioned, and all his orders are given as 
uttered rather than as heard ; the narrator, moreover, 
is familiar with the story of Wellington at Waterloo, 
and makes a country gentleman's joke about missing 
a hare. On the whole, I think it is plain that we have 
here a true account. 

Stories such as this are hard to come by, for the 
hunted seldom escape so narrowly and with so good 
a tale to tell. But our own records show at least one 
case of the kind, and it is one in which the crew of the 
submarine passed through an even severer trial, for 
they were hunted by their own side and had not the 
joy of a good fighting chance to sustain them. 



THE HUNTED 288 

In August, 1917, Lieut. -Commander V. M. Cooper, 
in command of one of H.M. submarines, was ordered 
to patrol a neighbouring coast, close in, between certain 
parallels. He was warned not to arrive on his billet 
before 10 a.m., for the very good reason that some of our 
own light forces were conducting operations in that 
direction during the night, and might be met return- 
ing at any time in the early morning. It must be 
remembered that when such a meeting does occur, no 
system of signalling is to be relied on for safety. A 
submarine will always be attacked on sight by any 
ship, friend or enemy, for she is a danger too deadly 
to be given a moment's chance. Her colours, if she 
show any, may be false, and only a seaplane can afford 
her the time necessary for answering a private signal. 
Commander Cooper knew all about this. He decided 
to arrive on his billet about noon, when the risk would 
presumably be over. 

At 8 o'clock, then /on the finest summer morning of 
the year, Commander Cooper was making his passage 
at normal surface speed, when the horizon on his 
starboard bow began to be delicately shaded by faint 
pencilled lines. Ten minutes more and a number of 
ships were visible, two points on the bow, and five to 
six miles away. They were immediately in the sun, 
and blurred by the haze, so that it was impossible to 
detect their nationality. They might be our own squad- 
ron, coming back unexpectedly early, or more likely 
a hostile force running from them. The only thing 
certain was that they had sighted the submarine and 
were bent on her destruction, for they were all bows on, 
bearing down upon her at high speed — destroyers and 
cruisers — throwing up clouds of dense black smoke. 



284 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Commander Cooper was in no indecent hurry, but 
he knew what he had to do. He must get down, or be 
put down. Moreover, he must get well down ; for the 
water was very clear, and the sea flat calm, without a 
ripple. After a last look at the charging squadron he 
dived to ninety feet, changing his course to 185°. 

His troubles began at once : the helm was reported 
jammed — it was amidships. He sent the first-lieu- 
tenant to inspect, the report was that the gear was. 
all correct — the jamming seemed to be due to the 
tightening of the rudder-post gland, either from external 
pressure, or from some distortion of the after com- 
partment of the ship. In any case, nothing could be 
done for the moment, and there were plenty of dis- 
tractions coming. At 8.37 the sound of propellers 
was recorded on the hydrophone — the destroyers were 
passing from port to starboard overhead, like hounds 
abreast trying to pick up a scent. 

One of them, must have thought she had hit it off, 
for a tremendous explosion shook the submarine — a 
depth-charge had been dropped not far behind her, 
shaking her stern violently. In her steering flat, the 
first -lieutenant and his men were lifted bodily off 
their feet. The commander continued his dive, and 
to his great comfort took bottom at 125 feet on the 
gauge. 

Within three minutes of the first explosion, a second 
one followed. It was equally violent, and to Commander 
Cooper appeared even louder ; but he told himself 
that this eftect was probably due to the relative position 
of the bomb, which had apparently detonated in a 
line with the conning-tower. As he was himself in the 
control-room, in the centre of the ship, the explosion 



THE HUNTED 285 

would naturally sound louder, being on the starboard 
beam instead of aft. 

The boat was well built, and the commander had 
perfect confidence in her. This was not his first experience 
of the kind. Exactly a year before, he had been out in 
the Cattegat in an E-boat and had met ' a wrong un ' 
— a Greif or Mowe, which had opened fire on him with 
four 6-inch guns at 2000 yards and straddled him at 
once. The boat had to dive as she was, in complete 
surface trim. Shot after shot fell close to her ; she was 
shaken by explosives and struck by splinters. Finally 
a 6-inch shell came alongside and threw up a huge 
column of water which fell plump on the commander 
as he descended through the hatch. Part of it accom- 
panied him down the ladder, but he had the presence 
of mind to draw the lid down behind him, and he and 
his boat lived to tell the tale. So he knew that a 
British submarine can stand a shock or two. But what 
made him really anxious was the question — which he 
hoped would occur to no one else on board — why did 
those two depth-charges fall so near one another : why 
did the enemy drop the second so close to the first ? The 
horrible suspicion came into his mind that his position 
was being given away by something that he could only 
guess at — some noise or some escape of air bubbles or 
oil which was reaching the surface. 

What was to be done ? Nothing, but to lie closer 
than ever, and enjoy the calm of the man who has done 
all that is possible. The order was given to stop all 
motors, even the S perry motor for running the gyro 
compass. All vent valves, and other possible leaking 
places, were inspected and reported tight. 

Then came the third explosion, the most violent of 



286 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

all. Lights went out suddenly, and the crew — groping 
in darkness — thought that the end had come. 

For a moment the ship seemed to be stunned ; then 
the lights reappeared. They had not been injured, 
but the shock had thrown all the chopper-switches 
on the auxiliary switchboard to the ' Off ' position. 
Not a trace of a leak could be discovered— the ship 
was alive still, and without a mortal wound. In her 
commander's judgment it would take a direct hit, or 
something very near it, to kill her. 

Perhaps the most trying time of all was that which 
now followed. What happened ? Nothing happened. 
It was that which was so trying. From 9.5 a.m., when 
the third depth-charge exploded, till 4.7 p.m., the sub- 
marine lay motionless on the sea-bed ; no one on board 
knew when it would be safe to move, or even whether 
it would be possible at all — for both helm and hydro- 
planes were jammed and other defects might be dis- 
covered. This was a test of moral stability as severe as 
any yet recorded, even in the submarine service, and 
it is not surprising that Commander Cooper was eventu- 
ally ordered to add to his report a special statement 
on the moral effects of the strain upon his ship's company. 
He reported accordingly, not in the picturesque style 
of the German officer, exhilarated by his successful 
fight, but with the brevity of a man of science and 
the simplicity of a narrator who has nothing to prove. 
The behaviour of the officers he assumes without a word ; 
that of the men, he says, was admirable. Naturally it 
varied with the individual ; the older and more ex- 
perienced men observed the demeanour of their officers, 
and were content to abide by it ; the younger ones 
showed more difference, each in accordance with his 




A huge column of water which fell plump on the^commconder* 



288 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

temperament ; but they, too, did excellently, and having 
been assured that all was well, the whole company 
settled down to read or to occupy themselves in other 
ways. In the majority of cases the events of the day 
had no permanent effect, though for a short time after- 
wards some of the men would start on being wakened 
or touched suddenly by others. As to himself, the 
commander declares that he thought the chances of 
being destroyed by depth-charges small. To retain 
this opinion in the circumstances was a proof of 
remarkable constancy ; the constancy of the ' man 
convinced against his will ' in the proverb. And he 
felt at the time, as he frankly says, that he would much 
rather remain on the surface and engage an enemy, 
however large, and at all costs, than endure the strain 
of a further experience of the kind. It would be likely, 
he thought, to affect the judgment for some days, 
causing a tendency to act over-cautiously or over- 
rashly. 

None the less he carried on. At 4.7 the submarine 
left the bottom and rose to a depth of 28 feet ; at 8.35 
in the evening she came to the surface and proceeded 
to her billet. There she carried out the duties of her 
patrol, and six days later, ' at 1 p.m., British Summer 
Time,' she returned to her base. 

Of the hunted who do not return to their base we 
cannot hope to hear much. But there was a smart en- 
gagement towards the end of 1917 between an American 
convoy-escort and a German submarine, of which 
accounts have been given by both sides, those above 
water and those below. The convoy was approaching 
our shores towards dusk of a November afternoon when 
the attack was made. The U-boat's periscope- — a 



THE HUNTED 289 

'finger ' one, of only two inches diameter — was sighted 
by the U.S.S. (destroyer) Fanning, which was at the 
moment turning to port at a speed of about fifteen 
knots. The submarine was 3 points on the Fannings 
port bow, distant about 400 yards, and going some 
two knots. The other destroyers had just passed 
the spot where she was seen ; the second of these, 
U.S.S. "Nicholson, was now on the Fanning 9 s starboard 
bow, and very handy for what was to follow. The 
commander of the Fanning, in order to continue his 
swing to port, put his helm hard over and at the same 
time increased speed to full. The periscope, of course, 
disappeared instantly. But every eye on the Fanning 
had marked her position. The commander, when he 
had turned about 30°, ported his helm so as to bring 
his ship right over the desired place, slightly ahead of 
the periscope's last position, and there he dropped a 
depth-charge, within three minutes of the first alarm. 
It was a fine piece of work, and, as it turned out, a 
decisive stroke. 

Nothing was seen for the moment, beyond the 
upheaval of water caused by the detonation. The 
Fanning continued to turn under starboard helm ; 
the Nicholson altered course to starboard, turned, and 
headed for the spot where the charge had been dropped, 
intending, no doubt, to drop a shot of her own in the 
same place. She conld not have made a luckier move. 
The conning-tower of the submarine suddenly broke 
surface between her and the convoy, about 500 yards 
from where it had disappeared. The boat was one of 
the new large-type U-boats, and was evidently hit, for 
she could neither submerge properly nor keep an even 
keel, but went rolling up and down like a gigantic 



290 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

porpoise in the direction of the convoy. The two 
destroyers headed for her at full speed ; Nicholson, 
who was, of course, leading, passed over her, dropped 
her depth-charge, and turned to port, firing three rounds 
from her stern gun into the wash. Once more the 
enemy's bow came up with a bound. This time he 
made a desperate effort to keep on the surface, and 
struggled along at two knots, being about 30° down by 
the stern. Finally he righted himself, no doubt by 
filling tanks and crowding men forward, and his speed 
seemed to increase. But by this time Farmings 
guns were speaking to him in unmistakable language ; 
after the third shot the hatch opened, a white shirt was 
waved, and the whole crew came on deck holding up 
their hands. 

It was now 4.28 ; the fight had taken no more than 
eighteen minutes from first to last, and ten minutes 
later the U-boat sank. Her crew had opened the sea 
valves and nearly paid the penalty, for they were all 
in the water before they could be got off to the destroyer, 
and one who could not swim was rescued by two 
chivalrous Americans. They jumped into the dark, 
cold sea for him, forgetting all about the German rules 
of war, and were disappointed when he died on deck. 

The account given by the survivors was full of 
interest. They were forty-one in number, including 
a captain-lieutenant, a first -lieutenant, a lieutenant 
and a chief-engineer. The boat had come straight 
from her base for the express purpose of attacking this 
particular convoy, and had been lying in wait for two 
days, paying no attention to any other ships. She 
carried twelve torpedoes, and she carries them still, 
for not one had been fired when she went down. The 




The submarine suddenly broke surface. 



292 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

first depth-charge from Fanning had been practically 
a direct hit ; it had wrecked her motors, diving gear, 
and oil leads, and sent her diving entirely out of control 
to a depth of 200 feet. The commanding officer thought 
at first that he would never be able to stop her, and that 
she would go on until the deep-sea pressure burst her 
sides in. He had only one possible course— he blew 
out all his four water-ballast tanks at once. This 
stopped the dive but brought the boat back to the 
surface with a rush and made her unmanageable. One 
witness in the destroyers says that she • leaped clear of 
the water like a breaching whale.' It was then that 
Nicholson overtook her and dropped the second depth- 
charge ; but even without this the end was inevitable, 
for in her porpoise -like gambols she could have been 
shot or rammed with certainty. Given a sufficient 
supply of patrol boats and depth-charges in the sub- 
marine chase there will be but few and evil days for the 
hunted. The American naval authorities have grasped 
this truth at once and founded a building policy upon 
it. The boats will be provided in any number, and if 
they are handled as the Fanning and Nicholson were 
handled, the U-boat will spend her short life in dodging 
a perpetual bombardment. 

That the end of the pirate, when it does come, is 
terrible, may easily be conjectured, but probably no 
imagination could give any idea of the actual experience. 
There is, however, in existence a narrative, compiled 
by a neutral from the evidence of two Germans who 
survived, by an extraordinary chance, the destruction 
of their ship. These men were among the crew of a 
U-boat of the largest and newest type, one of the last 
to come out of Zeebrugge before the harbour was bottled 



THE HUNTED 293 

up by the Intrepid and Iphigenia. She had not gone 
far from port when she hit a mine and exploded it. 
The shock was severe, but did not at once appear to 
be fatal. The electric switches were thrown out of 
position, the lights in some compartments went out, 
and the vessel began to sink rapidly by the stern ; 
but the lighting did not take long to restore, and the 
crew were immediately ordered to trim the boat by 
making a combined rush forward. This manoeuvre 
was successful in bringing her to an even keel, but by 
no effort could she be induced to rise to the surface. 

Now began the terror ; the plating of the ship had 
been shaken and forced apart by the explosion ; water 
was pouring in ; the leaks were rapidly enlarging, and 
all attempts to stop them failed. In very few minutes 
the boat would be filled either with water or with 
chlorine gas from the batteries. It was hardly possible 
to escape from the death-trap ; but there was one despe- 
rate chance, if the conning-tower and forward hatches 
could be forced open against the pressure of the sea. 

The commanding officer and the chief engineer 
entered the conning-tower and ordered their men to 
open one of the forward hatches. If this could be 
done, though the crew would have little hope of pushing 
their way up through the incoming torrent, the air- 
pressure inside the boat would be so greatly increased 
that the officers would be probably enabled to open the 
conning-tower and escape. But the outside pressure 
was too great for the hatch to be moved. The most 
violent efforts were made, the men working in relays 
and using their strength desperately, while their com- 
panions urged them on with terrible cries. Meantime 
it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe ; 



294 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

the salt water was penetrating the batteries and giving 
off chlorine gas. The stern of the vessel was now fully 
flooded and the internal air pressure was rapidly 
increasing as the free space grew less. The moment 
of suffocation was near. But the hatch could not be 
raised. 

At this point, some of the crew lost control and 
behaved like madmen. They crammed cotton waste 
into their ears and nostrils, and plunged beneath the 
water, which was now knee-deep. One man turned his 
revolver upon himself ; it missed fire ; he hurled it from 
him and plunged after his comrades. One, who still 
kept his head, with a final effort forced open one of the 
torpedo tubes and let in the water to end the struggle 
one way or another. Hope returned for a moment. 
The internal air pressure increased to such a pitch 
that the conning-tower and forward hatch could both 
be opened. Officers and men sprang and fought their 
way upwards through the inrush. 

Perhaps twenty in all made their way out of the 
ship ; but it was only passing from one death to 
another. Human lungs are not adapted for the 
sudden change from a deep-sea pressure to surface 
conditions. The shrieks of these unfortunate men 
were heard by a trawler which happened to be 
passing near ; but before she could reach them all 
were dead but two, and those two were broken men, 
bleeding from the lungs and crushed in spirit. They 
had digged a cruel pit and fallen into the midst of it 
themselves. 



CHAPTER XVII 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 



We have long been regretting that the work and the 
fame of our Submarine Service are for the most part 
hushed to a kind of undertone. We cannot speak of 
k them as we wish, lest the enemy should overhear and 
profit by information which he is unable to get for 
himself. But there are victories that cannot be con- 
cealed — blows which must and will reverberate, now 
and for ages to come. The work of the Navy at Ostend 
and Zeebrugge may openly be spoken of as it deserves. 
And this is fortunate ; for nations, like men, ' live by 
admiration, hope and love,' and admiration is not 
the least powerful of the three elements. The double 
attack of St. George's Day achieved not only a 
diminution of the enemy's strength, but an increase 
of our own. All over the world we heard it hailed as a 
great feat of arms, and a proof of mastery ; even our 
own hearts were stronger for being so vividly reminded 
that our seamen are what they have always been — 
the greatest righting men alive. 

The very conception of this attack was in itself 
conclusive evidence of a high heroic spirit. The enter- 
prise was not a wild-cat scheme, it was both possible 
and useful, but it was one from which no man or officer 
could expect to return. It was planned in November 

295 



296 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

1917, a month in which the long and {splendid work 
of our anti-submarine division was rapidly advancing 
to success. The imagination of the Service rose with 
the rising tide, and it was determined that the pirates 
should be not only hunted down at sea, but harried 
and blocked in their principal submarine sally-ports. 

These ports had, during the past two years, become 
more and more important to the U-boat campaign, 
and had therefore been more and more strongly guarded 
and fortified against attack. The section of coast 
upon which they lie had a system of defensive batteries, 
which included no less than 120 heavy guns, some of 
them of 15-inch calibre. A battery of these was 
upon the Mole at Zeebrugge — a solid stone breakwater 
more than a mile long, which contained also a railway 
terminus, a seaplane station, huge sheds for personnel 
and material, and, at the extreme seaward end, a 
lighthouse with searchlight and range-finder. An 
attacking force must reckon with a large number of 
defenders upon the Mole alone, besides the batteries 
and reinforcements on shore, and the destroyers and 
other ships in the harbour. But the attack on the 
Mole was an indispensable part of the enterprise ; for 
the enemy's attention must be diverted from the 
block-ships, which were to arrive during the fight and 
sink themselves in the mouth of the canal. And in 
order to deal satisfactorily with the Mole, it must be 
cut off from the reinforcements on shore by the 
destruction of the railway viaduct which formed the 
landward end of it. 

That was not all. The main difficulty of the plan 
was the management of the approach and return of the 
expedition. The conditions were extremely severe. 
First, the attacking force must effect a complete surprise 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 297 

and reach the Mole before the guns of the defence could 
be brought to bear upon them. The enemy search- 
lights must therefore be put out of action, as far as 
possible, by an artificial fog or smoke-screen ; but again, 
this must not be dense enough to obscure the approach 
entirely. Secondly, the work must be done in very 
short time, and to the minute ; for though the attack 
might be a surprise, the return voyage must be made 
under fire. The shore batteries were known to have a 
destructive range of sixteen miles ; to clear out of the 
danger zone would take the flotilla two hours, and 
daylight would begin by 3.30 a.m. It was, therefore, 
necessary to leave the Mole by 1.30 ; and as, for similar 
reasons, it was impossible to arrive before midnight, an 
hour and a half was all that the time-table could allow 
for fighting, blocking, and getting away again. To do 
things as exactly as this, a night must be chosen when 
wind, weather and tide would all be favourable. We 
need not be surprised at hearing that the expedition had 
twice before started and been compelled to return with- 
out reaching its objective — once it was actually within 
fifteen miles of the Mole — but fortunately the Germans, 
having no efficient patrol at sea, got no hint of what was 
being planned ; and in the end were so Completely taken 
by surprise, that some of their guns when captured 
had not even had the covers removed from them ! 

The attack was to be conducted by Vice-Admiral 
Roger Keyes, commanding at Dover. The force em- 
ployed was a large and composite one which required 
masterly handling. The Ostend expedition was a 
comparatively simple affair; but for Zeebrugge there 
were needed, besides the principal ships, a fleet of 
smoke -boats for making fog, motor launches for showing 
flares and bringing off men in difficulties, monitors 



298 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

for bombarding the batteries, and destroyers for look- 
ing after the enemy ships lying in harbour, besides a 
submarine of which we shall hear more presently. The 
landing on the Mole was to be made from Vindictive, 
an old light cruiser of 5720 tons, and she was to be 
accompanied by two old Mersey ferry-boats, Daffodil 
and Iris, with storming and demolition parties. The 
three destroyers were North Star (Lieut. -Commander 
K. C. Helyar), Phoebe (Lieut. -Commander H. E. Gore- 
Langton), and Warwick, in which the Admiral himself 
was flying his flag for the occasion. 

It need not be said, except for the pleasure of say- 
ing it, that the name of every officer present is worth 
remembering. Those who died, gave their lives to 
secure a victory as effective and gallant as any recorded, 
even in our naval history. Those who returned are 
marked men, to whom their country will never look 
in vain for sound and brilliant service. It is an in- 
spiring thought that while their action was unique, 
they themselves were not. The British Navy is full 
of such men, and we may jostle them in the corridors 
of the Admiralty every day in the year. Anyone who 
happened to be near Room 24 on the morning of Monday, 
April 22, might have seen two officers come out who 
bore no sign of a destiny more heroic than the rest. 
Yet they were, in fact, Captain Alfred Carpenter, who 
had been selected to command Vindictive, and Wing- 
Commander Brock, who was to create the magic fog, 
and whose mysterious fate is one of the most heroic 
and moving episodes of the fight. 

To Captain Carpenter we owe the best account 
yet given of the expedition. If we read the main 
portion of it, and supplement it with a few notes, we 
shall get as near to realising the achievement as anyone 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 299 

without experience or expert knowledge can do. ' At 
last,' he says, ' the opportunity we had waited for 
so long arose, and everybody started off in the highest 
spirits, and with no other thought than to make the 
very greatest success of the operation. Fate was very 
kind to us on the whole, and everything went well — 
almost as per schedule. The various phases depended 
on accurate timing of the work of the various units. 
The smoke-screen craft and the fast motor-boats, at 
given intervals, rushed on ahead at full speed, laid their 
smoke-screens, attacked enemy vessels with torpedoes, 
and generally cleared the way for the main force, in 
addition to hiding the approach of the latter from 
the shore batteries. Meanwhile a heavy bombardment 
was being carried out by our monitors, and the* sound 
of their firing, as we approached, was one of the most 
heartening things that I can remember. On arriving 
at a certain point some considerable distance from 
shore, the forces parted, some going to Zeebrugge and 
some to Ostend, the idea being that the forces should 
arrive at the two places simultaneously, so that com- 
munication from one place to the other could not be 
used as a warning in either case. Precisely at midnight 
(the scheduled time) the main force arrived at Zeebrugge 
and two of the block-ships arrived at Ostend. The 
Admiral's signal before going into action was " St 
George for England ! " and the reply from Vindictive 
was " May we give the Dragon's tail a damned good 
twist ! " 

'At midnight we steamed through a very thick 
smoke-screen. German star shells were lighting up 
the whole place almost like daylight, and one had an 
extraordinary naked feeling when one saw how exposed 
we were, although it was in the middle of the night. 



300 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

On emerging from the smoke-screen the end of the 
Mole, where the lighthouse is, was seen close ahead, 
distant about 400 yards. The ship was turned im- 
mediately to go alongside, and increased to full speed 
so as to get there as fast as possible. We had decided 
not to open fire from the ship until they opened fire on 
us, so that we might remain unobserved till the last 
possible moment. A battery of five or six guns on the 
Mole began firing at us almost immediately, from a 
range of about 300 yards, and every gun on the Vin- 
dictive that would bear fired at them as hard as it 
could. (Ours were 6-inch guns and 12-pounders.) 

' In less than five minutes the ship was alongside the 
Mole, and efforts were made to grapple the Mole, so as 
to keep the ship in place. The Iris was ahead. The 
Daffodil, which was following close astern, came up and 
in the most gallant manner placed her bow against 
the Vindictive and pushed the Vindictive sideways, until 
she was close alongside the Mole. There was a very 
heavy swell against the Mole ; the ships were rolling 
about, and this made the work of securing to the Mole 
exceedingly difficult. ' 

Vindictive was specially fitted along the port side 
with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows 
or gangways, by which the storming parties were to 
land. The men were standing ready, but before the 
word was given a shell killed Colonel Bertram Elliot 
of the Marines, and Captain Henry Halahan (who was 
commanding the blue-jackets) fell to machine-gun fire. 
But no losses could stop the stormers. 

' When the brows were run out from the Vindictive, 
the men at once climbed out along them. It was an 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 301 

extremely perilous task, in view of the fact that the 
ends of the brows at one moment were from eight to 
ten feet above the wall, and the next moment were 
crashing on the wall as the ship rolled. The way in 
which the men got over those brows was almost super- 
human. I expected every moment to see them falling 
off between the Mole and the ship — at least a 30-f eet drop 
— and being crushed by the ship against the wall. 
But not a man fell — their agility was wonderful. It 
was not a case of seamen running barefoot along the 
deck of a rolling ship ; the men were carrying heavy 
accoutrements, bombs, Lewis guns and other articles, 
and their path lay along a narrow and extremely un- 
steady plank. (Of these plank brows only two were 
.ninjured by the enemy's fire ; the rest were riddled.) 
They never hesitated ; they went along the brows, 
and onto the Mole with the utmost possible speed. 
Within a few minutes three to four hundred had been 
landed, and under cover of a barrage put down on the 
Mole by Stokes guns and howitzer fire from the ships, 
they fought their way along. 

c Comparatively few of the German guns were able 
to hit the hull of the ship, as it was behind the protection 
of the wall. Safety, in fact, depended on how near 
you could get to the enemy guns, instead of how far 
away. While the hull was guarded, the upper works 
of the ship — the funnels, masts, ventilators and bridge 
— were showing above the wall, and upon these a large 
number of German guns appeared to be concentrated. 
Many of our casualties were caused by splinters coming 
down from the upper works. (One shell burst in the 
Stokes battery, another destroyed the flame-throwing 
house, and a third killed every man in the fighting top 
except one — Sergeant Finch, who was badly wounded, 



302 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

but kept his machine-gun going and won the V.C. for 
it.) If it had not been for the Daffodil continuing to 
push the ship in towards the wall throughout the 
operation, none of the men who went on the Mole 
would ever have got back again.' 

But Daffodil's men jumped across to Vindictive, 
and so joined the storming party. Iris, in the mean- 
time, was trying to grapple the Mole ahead of Vindictive ; 
but her grapnels were not large enough to span the 
parapet, and two most gallant officers — Lieut.-Com- 
mander Bradford and Lieut. Hawkins — who climbed 
up and sat astride the parapet trying to make them 
fast, were both shot and fell between the ship and the 
wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot 
away. He came out of action with his ship, but died 
next morning. His place on the bridge was taken by 
Lieutenant Spencer, R.N.R., who was already wounded, 
but refused to be relieved. Finally a single big shell 
came down through the upper deck and burst among some 
marines who were waiting their turn for the gangways. 
Out of 56 only 7 survived, and they were all wounded. 
Altogether Iris lost 8 officers and 69 men killed, and 
3 officers and 102 men wounded. But the parapet 
was stormed all right, and the Germans under it put 
up no resistance except intense and unremitting gun- 
fire. Some of them took refuge in a destroyer, and were 
sent to the bottom with her by a successful bombing 
attack from the parapet. 

After some fifteen minutes of this work the batteries 
on the Mole were silenced, the dugouts cleaned out, 
and the whole range of hangars and store sheds set 
blazing, or blown to ruins with dynamite. Then came 
the first great moment of triumph. ' A quarter of 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 303 

an hour after the Vindictive took her position, a tre- 
mendous explosion was seen at the shore end of the 
Mole. We then knew that our submarine (the old 
C. 3, who had certainly reached the age for retiring) had 
managed to get herself in between the piles of the 
(railway) viaduct connecting the Mole with the shore, 
and had blown herself up. She carried several tons 
of high explosive (the equivalent of over 40 good 
mines) and the effect of her action was effectually to 
cut off the Mole from the land. Before the explosion 
the crew of the submarine, which comprised some half- 
dozen officers and men (under command of Lieutenant 
R. D. Sandford, R.N.), got away in a very small motor 
skiff, which lost its propeller and had to be pulled 
with (a single pair of) paddles against a heavy tide and 
under machine-gun fire from a range which could be 
reckoned only in feet. Most of the crew were wounded, 
but the tiny boat was picked up by a steam pinnace 
(commanded by Lieut. -Commander Sandford, who 
rescued his brother and the other five salamanders 
when they had struggled only 200 yards away from the 
point of explosion). It is possible that the Germans 
who saw the submarine coming in under the play of 
their searchlights, thought that her object was to 
attack the vessels within the Mole, and that she thought 
it feasible to get through the viaduct to do this. Their 
neglect to stop the submarine as she approached could 
only be put down to the fact that they knew she could 
not get through owing to the large amount of inter- 
lacing between the piles, and that they really believed 
they were catching her ! A large number of Germans 
were actually on the viaduct, a few feet above the 
submarine, and were firing at her with machine-guns. 
I think it can safely be said that everyone of those 



304 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

Germans went up with the viaduct. The cheer raised 
by my men in the Vindictive when they saw the terrific 
explosion, was one of the finest things I ever heard. 
Many of the men were severely wounded — some had 
three and even four wounds — but they had no thought 
except for the success of the operation. (They cheered 
their captain as he went round the decks and kept 
asking, " Have we won ? " — just as if it had been a 
football match.) 

' About twenty-five minutes after the Vindictive 
got alongside (and ten minutes after the explosion 
of C. 3), the block-ships were seen rounding the light- 
house and heading for the canal entrance. It was then 
realised on board the Iris, Daffodil and Vindictive that 
their work had been accomplished. The block-ships 
came under very heavy fire immediately they rounded 
the end of the Mole. Most of the fire, it appears, was 
concentrated on the leading ship, the Thetis (Com- 
mander R. S. Sneyd). She ran aground off the entrance 
to the canal, on the edge of the channel, and was sunk, 
as approximately as possible, across the channel itself, 
thus forming an obstruction to the passage of the 
German vessels.' She was coming in in grand style, 
but had the bad luck to catch her propeller in the 
defence nets and became a target ; but she did fine 
work even then, signalling to her sister ships and 
enabling them to avoid the nets. And she may give 
quite as much trouble to the enemy yet as the other 
two, for she lies right in the channel, which must always 
be kept free from silt if even the outer harbour is to 
be used. 

'This co-operation between the three block-ships, 
carried out under extremely heavy fire, was one of the 
finest things in the operation. 




A tremendous explosion was seen at the shore end of the Mole.' 



306 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

' The second and third ships, the Intrepid (Lieutenant 
Stuart Bonham-Carter) and Iphigenia (Lieutenant E.W. 
Billyard-Leake), both went straight through the canal 
entrance until they actually reached a point some 
two or three hundred yards inside the shore lines, and 
behind some of the German batteries. It really seems 
very wonderful. How the crews of the two ships 
ever got away is almost beyond imagination.' Lieu- 
tenant Bonham-Carter, after running Intrepid into the 
canal bank, ordered his crew away in the boats, and 
blew her up himself. He then escaped on a Carley 
float, a kind of patent buoy which lights a flare when 
it takes the water. Very fortunately, Intrepid was 
still smoking and the smoke partially hid both him 
and his flare. He was picked up by a motor launch 
(Lieutenant Deane, R.N.V.R.) which had actually 
gone inshore to take off another officer who had swum 
to* the bank, and brought away both together. Iphi- 
genia, too, after ramming a dredger and carrying away 
a barge with her up the canal, was even more success- 
fully placed across the channel and blown up with 
her engines still going, to ensure her sticking her nose 
fast in the mud. Her cr^w escaped, some in the motor 
launches and some in their own boats, rowing for 
miles out to sea before they were picked up by the 
destroyers, 

' The situation, rather more than an hour after the 
Vindictive got alongside, was this : The block-ships had 
passed in, had come to the end of their run, and had 
done their work. The viaduct was blown up and the 
Mole had been stormed.' Even the lighthouse had 
been sacked, for Wing-Commander Brock had an- 
nounced before starting that after seeing to the 
smoke-screen work, his first objective would be the 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 307 

range-finding apparatus which he knew was up in the 
lighthouse top. He carried out his intentions. He 
was seen going into the lighthouse, and coming out 
again laden with an armful of stuff ; then charging 
a gun single-handed ; and, last of all, lying desperately- 
wounded under the parapet wall of the Mole. This 
was only reported afterwards, and his fate is unknown 
to this day. If he died, he died as he would have 
wished, for he was a big man with a big heart, and did 
his righting gladly. ' Nothing but a useless sacrifice 
of life could have followed if the three boarding vessels 
had remained by the Mole any longer. The signal to 
withdraw was therefore given, and the ships got away 
under cover of the smoke-screens as quickly as they 
could. The signal was given by siren, but the noise 
of the guns was so loud that it had to be repeated many 
times. Twenty minutes passed before it was definitely 
reported that there was nobody left on the Mole who 
could possibly get on board the withdrawing ships. 

' All three ships got away from the wall ; they went 
at full speed and were followed all the way along their 
course by salvos from the German guns. Shells 
seemed to fall all round the ships without actually 
hitting them. The gunners apparently had our speed 
but not our range, and with remarkable regularity 
the salvos plopped into the sea behind us. In a 
short time the ships were clear of imminent danger, 
owing to the large amount of smoke which they had 
left behind them.' Two of the three destroyers also 
got away safely ; the third, North Star, was sunk by 
gunfire near the block-ships but her crew were brought 
off by Phoebe. Her loss was balanced by that of the 
German destroyer, sunk by bombs under the inner wall 
of the Mole. Of our motor-launches (under command 



308 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

of Captain R. Collins), many of which performed feats 
of incredible audacity at point-blank range, all returned 
but two. 

4 There is no doubt about the complete success of 
the enterprise. Photographs taken by our flying-men 
show that two of the block-ships are in the mouth 
of the Bruges Canal, well inside the shore line, and 
lying diagonally across the channel. The third is 
outside the canal mouth, blocking the greater part of 
the channel across the harbour. An officer assured 
me that the bottoms having been blown out of the 
ships, they are now simply great solid masses of con- 
crete. Blasting, even if it could be attempted without 
risk to the surroundings (e.g., the walls of the canal and 
docks) would only divide one solid mass into several 
masses, just as obstructive as the whole. Moreover, 
owing to the shallowness of most of the harbour area, 
every tide will cause sand to silt up about the obstacles 
and make their removal more difficult. The photo- 
graphs reveal a clean break in the viaduct at the land- 
ward end of the Mole. They also show that the Germans 
have tried to bridge the gap by planking.' But planking 
will hardly carry the railway ; and as for the block- 
ships, they were still in position three months later, 
with dredging parties at work who only offered an 
excellent target to the bombs of our seaplanes. 

During the attack at Zeebrugge the wind changed 
and blew the smoke off shore. This helped us in the 
end by enabling the ships to cover their retirement 
with a thick screen of miscellaneous smoke ; but at 
Ostend it caused a partial failure of the blocking opera- 
tions. Commodore Hubert Lynes, who commanded 
this little expedition, successfully laid his smoke-screen, 
and sent in his motor-boats behind it to light up the 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 309 

ends of the two wooden piers with flares, visible to 
our ships but not to the enemy. He then sent in two 
old cruisers, Sirius and Brilliant, which were to be sunk 
between the piers. But the moment the wind changed, 
the enemy, seeing the flares, at once extinguished them, 
sinking the motor-boats by gunfire, and the block- 
ships were no longer able to find the entrance. They 
ran aground about 2000 yards to the east of the piers 
and were there blown up. Their crews were taken off 
under heavy fire in motor-launches commanded by 
Lieutenant K. R. Hoare, R.N.V.R., and Lieutenant 
R. Bourke, R.N.V.R. 

One object had been accomplished — the Ostend 
garrison had been thoroughly distracted from giving 
any warning or assistance to Zeebrugge ; but the 
block-ships had only made the harbour entrance 
dangerous — they had not closed it. There was no doubt 
on either side that the attempt would be renewed. 
Our men were all ready and eager for a fight to a 
finish ; the Germans were quick to take every pre- 
caution possible. They removed the Stroom Bank 
buoy, which marked the entrance to the harbour, cut 
the wooden piers through, to prevent landing parties 
from advancing along them, and tried to keep up a 
patrol of the coast with some nine destroyers. But, 
in spite of all, they were once more taken by surprise, 
and this time they lost the game at Ostend as they had 
lost it at Zeebrugge. 

The new expedition sailed on May 9 under com- 
mand, as before, of Commodore Hubert Lynes. Vice- 
Admira 1 Sir Roger Keyes was also present himself, 
in the destroyer Warwick. The flotilla was this time 
on a larger scale, and the block-ship (which was en- 
trusted to Commander Godsal, late of the Brilliant) 



310 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

was none other than the Vindictive herself, and was 
to double her glory by a triumphant death. 

The night was a perfect one, calm with light airs 
from the north, a few faint stars and no moon. The 
ships came on in silence ; for though the monitors were 
already anchored in their firing positions, and the heavy 
land batteries towards Nieuport were trained ready 
for the bombardment, not a shot was to be fired until 
the signal was given for every arm to attack at the 
same moment. The whole German front was shrouded 
in a delicate haze, like a genuine sea fog, but even 
more impenetrable to sight or searchlight. Under 
cover of this, Commodore Lynes first took his destroyer 
in and laid a burning light -buoy as a mark for the 
block-ship. Vindictive followed, and from this point 
bore up for another flare, lighted by Lieutenant William 
Slayter on the former position of the Stroom Bank 
buoy. Four minutes before she arrived there, and 
fifteen minutes before she was timed to reach the 
harbour mouth, the signal was given for a general 
engagement. Instantly the whole force got to work. 
Two motor -boats, under Lieutenant Albert Poland 
and Lieutenant Darrel Reid, R.N.R., dashed in and 
fired their torpedoes at the two wooden pier ends. 
The western pier had a machine-gun mounted, and 
that too went up in the explosion. Then the sea- 
planes began to bomb the town and the monitors were 
heard thundering from far out to sea. The German 
star shells were useless in the mist, but every gun in 
the batteries and land-turrets opened at once, and the 
Royal Marine guns on our front replied to them with 
flanking fire. 

At this moment a real sea fog drifted in and mixed 
with the smoke-screen ; our destroyers had to keep 



ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 311 

touch by siren signals, and Vindictive found herself in 
danger of missing her mark, like Sirius and Brilliant. 
She had a motor-boat escorting her on each side with 
huge Dover flares, but the darkness was too dense 
even for them. Twice she passed the entrance, and 
came back at last to her first position. Then, by a happy 
chance, a breeze cleared the fog for a moment and she 
saw the piers close to her with the opening dead ahead. 
Acting-Lieutenant Guy Cockburn, in his motor-boat, 
saw them too ; he dashed in under heavy fire and laid 
his flare right in the channel ; Vindictive went straight 
over it and into goal. 

The enemy were now blazing at her with everything 
they had. A shell hit the after-control and killed 
Sub-Lieutenant Angus MacLachlan with all his men. 
Machine-gun bullets made the chart-room and bridges 
untenable, and Commander Godsal took his officers 
into the conning -tower. There, after steaming about 
200 yards along between the piers, he left them, and 
went outside, calling back to them to order the ship 
to be laid bow on to the eastern pier and so swing across 
the channel. The order was no sooner given than 
a shell struck the conning -tower full. It killed the 
Commander outside and stunned Lieutenant Sir John 
Alleyne, who was inside with Lieutenant V. A. C. 
Crutchley. Lieutenant Crutchley shouted through the 
observation slit to the Commander, but, getting no 
reply, he coolly went on with the swinging of the ship 
by ringing full speed astern with the port engine. But 
he soon found that she had ceased to move, so he gave 
the order to abandon ship and sink her. The main 
charges were accordingly blown by Engineer-Lieut. - 
Commander William Bury and the auxiliary charges 
by Lieutenant Crutchley himself. Vindictive heaved, 



812 SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE 

sank about six feet, and settled on the bottom at an 
angle of forty-five degrees across the channel. ' Her 
work was done/ says the official narrative. 

The losses were two officers and six men killed, 
two officers and ten men missing, believed killed, and 
four officers and eight men wounded. The greater 
number of these were hit while leaving the Vindictive, 
They were taken off under very heavy machine-gun 
fire by motor-launches under Lieutenant Bourke, 
R.N.V.R., and Lieutenant GeoffryDrummond, R.N.V.R. 
When the latter reached the Warwick his launch 
was shot to pieces and unseaworthy, he himself was 
severely wounded, his second in command, Lieutenant 
Gordon Ross, R.N.V.R., and one seaman, were killed, 
and a number of others wounded. Day was breaking 
and they were still within easy range of the forts, so 
the good ship motor-launch 254 was sunk by a charge 
in her engine-room. The triumphant return was made 
without even the most distant attempt at interference 
by the nine German destroyers. It was a fine chance 
for a counterstroke with superior force, but the nine 
did not see it. Ostend remained, like Zeebrugge, a 
complete British victory. 



AT THE BALLANTYNE PRES3 

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE AND CO. LTD. 

COLCHESTER, LONDON AND ETON, ENGLAND 



By Sir Henry Newbolt 

Submarine and Anti-Submarine. 

By Sir HENRY NEWBOLT, Author of "Tales of the 
Great War," "The Book of the Thin Red Line," "The 
Book of the Blue Sea," etc. With Coloured Frontispiece 
and 20 other illustrations by Norman Wilkinson, R.I. 
Crown 8vo. $2.25 net. 
This book contains a collection of tales of the submarine cam- 
paign, based on authentic narratives hitherto unpublished. It 
also traces the evolution of the undersea boat from its earliest 
days, demolishing the German claim that it is the product of 
German ingenuity and skill. Among other introductory chapters 
is one on the submarine war as an illustration of the contrast 
between the national spirit of England and that of Germany. 

The Book of the Happy Warrior. With 8 Coloured Plates 
and 25 Pictures in black-and-white by Henry J. Ford. 
Crown 8vo. $2.25 net. 

"A compilation of tales of chivalry ; of Roland, Cceur de Lion, 
St. Louis, Robin Hood, Bayard, Du Gueselin and the Black Prince, 
the French and English wars, and other famous wars and war- 
riors. The whole tone of it is vibrant with true heroism, which 
means gentleness and loyalty as well as prowess in arms ; and its 
closeness to the text of the 'Chanson de Roland' and other 
classic tales is a quality worthy of high praise." — N. Y. Tribune. 

"Ought to be in the library of every Boy Scout." — Philadelphia 
Ledger. 

Tales of the Great War. With 7 Coloured Plates and 32 Il- 
lustrations in black-and-white by Norman Wilkinson and 
Christopher Clark. Crown 8vo. $2.25 net. 
". . . Vivifies, as official reports cannot, the fighting in 
Flanders and France, the sea battles off South America, the air 
war and the great naval battle of Jutland. ... To an un- 
usual degree the book is alive. . . *." — Boston Post. 

The Book of the Thin Red Line. With 8 Coloured Plates 
and 38 Illustrations in black-and-white by Stanley L. 
Wood. Crown 8vo. $2.25 net. 
". . . Stories of real military adventures by real men who 
won distinction and high command by their heroism and gal- 
lantry in action . . . admirably illustrated. . ." — The In- 
dependent. (N. Y.) 

The Book of the Blue Sea. With 8 Coloured Plates and 32 
Illustrations in black-and-white by Norman Wilkinson. 
Crown 8vo. $2.25 net. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. New York 



N Q S 6 



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